Perform a series of actions for each item in a column

[CharlesBrewer]

Hello,

I don't know if this is possible but I thought I would ask. I have a dynamic number of links on a page in a single row, that looks like this. 

Each of those RA-xxx numbers are hyperlinks. I need automate to be able able to recognize each of those, and click on them, which opens a new window with another URL : 

Which then opens up another page I need to do a Control +S on to save, and then I'm hoping to be able to email those files and then delete them.

Is this possible? My initial thought was to have it extract the URLs in the column, and then do a "For Each" loop and have it open the url in the browser, do the clicks and saves and then close them.  But, the extracted URL is not the same as the URL that goes to the next window, it just takes me back, so I would need to do the physical clicks, but it would need to go down the column and know how many there are.

[VJR]

so I would need to do the physical clicks, but it would need to go down the column and know how many there are.

Are you able to use the web recorder which will give a skeleton of code for doing the physical clicks and then tweak the code to do the same for all the other links?

The count of rows will be given by doing the count on the datatable %DataFromWebPage.RowsCount%

[CharlesBrewer]

I can use the web recorder yes, but I do not know how to tweak the code, as you put it.

[Henrik_M]

It is possible.

Don't use the recorder; it is garbage. Add your UI elements and actions manually.

This is (most likely) what you can do:

1. Add one of the links as a UI element.
2. Open the editing screen of the selector of the UI element.
3. Observe the structure of the selector.
4. Activate the Ordinal property of the a element, which is probably at the bottom of the hierarchy.
5. Put 0 as the value.
6. Test that Click link action is able to activate the first link.
7. Put 1 as the value.
8. The action should now activate the second link.
9. Add an incremental Loop, and put the Click action inside.
10. Edit the UI element selector again. Hit the the bottom left toggle, so it goes to the left and says Visual editor.
11. Instead of a static numeric value, add the %LoopIndex% variable.
12. The loop should now be able to cycle through all the links and click them.
13. If you know the exact amount of links every time, you can adjust the values in the Loop action.
14. If you're not sure, you can use an If web page (does not) contains action to trigger an Exit loop action, once all links have been visited.

My friend Thomas made a video that covers some of the technique.

Power Automate Desktop - advanced UI elements - YouTube

Skip to minute 6 if you have to.

[CharlesBrewer]

Okay so I got through the first 8 steps there no problem. I'm trying to do the loop, and as a simple test I'm just trying to have it open the first link, then close the window, then hopefully open the 2nd. It opens the first but it can't seem to then Close the window.  :

I assume I need some sort of Browser2 variable for it to recognize the popup. The question how to do so, considering the URL of the popup is not static, nor does the URL match the extracted URL from the "Anchor" I am clicking on. I hope that all makes sense?

[CharlesBrewer]

I should mention I tried to do the Recorder for this also, in which case I tried to do it out of the loop to just to see if I could do it once, and it looks like this :

But it  breaks on the Launch new Chrome window (I do obviously have the add-on)

I'm not sure that would work anyway because the URL is not going to b static like I said, in fact I think that's what's breaking it, that ID at the end changes. Is there a way for it to recognize the "chrome window in the front" or some such, I'm a bit lost on this one.

[CharlesBrewer]

So small update as my day is coming to an end. I tried a 'launch new window' and tried to use the title :

And then I did a "Click link on web page" after, so the flow looks like this :

So the funny thing is, it is working. It clicks on the link, the popup opens, and then it clicks on the "Close" button. However Automate is reading it as a failure

[CharlesBrewer]

Though I can possibly ignore the error above, that' not what I want it to do anyway. I want it to click on the "Tag Document" link and I can't get it to do so. I even tried to do a Data Extract on it but the URL doesn't show as an option, very odd 😕 Clicking though should be something I can do

[CharlesBrewer]

So I still cannot get it to click on the "Tag Document." I am trying to manually create the UI element, and I am likely doing it wrong.

So there are the 3 steps. It clicks on "Anchor 5" just fine, which then opens up a popup. So I did that "Launch New Chrome window" and I set the options as follows : 

I assume I had to make a new Browser variable to get it to recognize the popup.

In the popup I need it to click on this link :

I tried to do "Add UI element" however I cannot get it to select anything in this box. So I did a record and deleted what it had, since it did not work anyway. I took a look at the html, which looks something like this.

So I changed the Anchor 6 selector to this :

This of course did not work, I get an error that the element is not found. Any thoughts on which I could try instead, or am I doing something else wrong completely?

[VJR]

In the html it shows as Class Title but your anchor 6 only says Title. So try changing that. Make sure spacing, upper/ lower case everything is right.

Also speaking of recording, if the above does not work, after you record there will be a separate UI elements section pertaining to the recording on the right hand side.

Open it and share screenshots of as much as possible of all the attributes of the UI element.

[CharlesBrewer]

Assuming I did this right, same error

That was the original recorded UI element, but recording again, this is what it looks like :

I'm not able to open a Visual editor on this one, just the above.

[CharlesBrewer]

Been trying different things today and still no go, which leads me to a question : Does the link to click on have to actually be visible? Like do I need to make power automate scroll down first, or can it click on the link without scrolling down?

[VJR]

If you are doing it by capturing the UI element, then it need not be visible.

Another option you can try is - Find any other nearby element that can be identifiable using UI elements.

For example, the "Dealer comments" textbox -> Click inside it -> and then using sendkeys press TAB which will take you to the hyperlink -> and then press ENTER.

At first you can check the sequence and the keys by doing it manually and then mimic the same via PAD.

[CharlesBrewer]

That's a pretty cool idea, I didn't think of that. However, still not working. I could not get PAD to recognize the textbox for some reason, both through recording and through trying to manually add a UI element. So instead I did the "h2" header above the link. I tested manually and it worked, but on the flow I get an error as always that it can't find it, I don't get it.  Finally the only way I was able to get it to work was to do a 5 second delay, then in "foreground window" hit tab 14 times and Enter 😄

I might up the delay to 100 or so, other than that, it's working and I will have to go with it.  Now I just need to do the next step of Saving...and figure out how to loop that for each item in the column, which I'm sure will be fun and I'll be back for 😛 I really think it's just something weird with the code on this particular window, because I have a lot of trouble choosing any UI elements inside this DIV.

[CharlesBrewer]

So I think I got it, for the most part. I need to add in a couple delays, especially between the 14 tabs heh cause it messes up a little bit, but that's no biggy. Just to double check my work if you don't mind. So here is my process :

I don't know if all the tabbing and the mouse clicks is the best way to do it, but this old page is in an iframe and I was having trouble otherwise. This is on a VM so the page location etc is all going to be pretty static.  So then I had to loop it. Here is how I set the loop :

Originally I had it as "Start from : 0" like I found in youtube videos, but it didn't seem to work, I had to start it from 1. And then for Anchor 5, I set it like so :

This seems like a bit of a cluster, but I assumed I had to adjust the tablerow (tr), and not the table data (td), and that worked out.  But if there's something that can be done better, please let me know of course.  Otherwise I now have to move onto the fun part of trying to get this loop within another loop, where it will filter by each of our 22 branches and send an email to the correct folks. That will be fun. I'll try it on my own of course, if I can't get it it'll be a new thread tomorrow 🙂

[VJR]

For reference SendKeys {TAB:14} would send it 14 times. Adding delay is always a good idea when sendkeys is used.

[CharlesBrewer]

Ah good to know! That ended up not working anyway because it turns out some of them have more fields than others. So I need to find something consistent, but I'm getting closer at least 🙂

[CharlesBrewer]

So what I tried to do to get around it, is click on a UI element below it, and then Shift+Tab to go up from there 4 times. I tested manually, and it worked. However doing it in Automate goes somewhere completely else, and I am confused why? I even tried just 1 Shift + Tab, and it's not going up at all. It's not going down, either, it's going in a weird direction which confuses me.  I am doing {Shift}({Tab}) which should be right? Seems like a simple thing but it's driving me crazy now 😞

[MichaelAnnis]

I don’t know if this will help, but try:

{LShiftKey}({Tab})

also, if that doesn’t work, try that with “use hardware keys” option flipped. 

good luck. 

[CharlesBrewer]

My bad I should have mentioned I tried both of those things already, I was in a bit of a hurry last night. Oh well I'll try random things today, cross your toes for me.