05-15-2012, 01:22 PM -
I’ve been doing a lot of Googling on SendKeys & it seems that there IS a major problem with SendKeys on both Vista & Win 7 (I assume on Win 8 also). Many developers & programmers advise to stay completely away from SendKeys as the last version of Windows that they worked reliably on was Win XP. With the event of Vista SendKeys started to act weird and often unreliably with the following problems being documented…
1. Sendkeys can transmit different code depending on which windows were open or how many were open. This is exactly my experience.
2. The code that SendKeys sends may be completely different from what you programmed it to send. In my case the code string we have been discussing actually opened up the Start Task Manager window… NOT what I asked for.
One developer bluntly said “Don’t use SendKeys for ANYTHING”. Other programmers made similar statements.
The weird thing is that on some systems (such as yours) SendKeys seems to work correctly (also documented) while on others it is a complete bag of worms. No one really knows why this is but I suspect it has to do with the combination of hardware & software one is running.
The problem is so bad on many systems that a third party has developed a complete replacement for SendKeys called SenKey (no S on the end). You install SenKey.bas with your project and SendKey.bas captures all your SendKeys commands & transmits them correctly. SendKey has two problems… they want $30 US for SendKey.bas which is more than I am willing to pay just to transmit a couple of HotKey strokes plus just like SendKeys, it does not support the Win key which I need for one of my keystroke transmissions.
So, the bottom line is… I use AutoHotKey to do all that I want plus it provides a wealth of other features that SendKeys never provided.
Hope this helps a little to clear up the confusion as to why SendKeys work sometime or on some systems & not on others like mine.
Cheers;
Doc
1. Sendkeys can transmit different code depending on which windows were open or how many were open. This is exactly my experience.
2. The code that SendKeys sends may be completely different from what you programmed it to send. In my case the code string we have been discussing actually opened up the Start Task Manager window… NOT what I asked for.
One developer bluntly said “Don’t use SendKeys for ANYTHING”. Other programmers made similar statements.
The weird thing is that on some systems (such as yours) SendKeys seems to work correctly (also documented) while on others it is a complete bag of worms. No one really knows why this is but I suspect it has to do with the combination of hardware & software one is running.
The problem is so bad on many systems that a third party has developed a complete replacement for SendKeys called SenKey (no S on the end). You install SenKey.bas with your project and SendKey.bas captures all your SendKeys commands & transmits them correctly. SendKey has two problems… they want $30 US for SendKey.bas which is more than I am willing to pay just to transmit a couple of HotKey strokes plus just like SendKeys, it does not support the Win key which I need for one of my keystroke transmissions.
So, the bottom line is… I use AutoHotKey to do all that I want plus it provides a wealth of other features that SendKeys never provided.
Hope this helps a little to clear up the confusion as to why SendKeys work sometime or on some systems & not on others like mine.
Cheers;
Doc