Using an IE browser with Visual Basic

Question

Struggling to find a solution to this one. From Visual Basic (VBA in Excel more specifically) I'm able to call an Internet Explorer window by title using

AppActivate ("My Page Title - Windows Internet Explorer")

And it works great each time.

I can open a new window and send a url to it using..

Dim ie As Object
Set ie = New InternetExplorer
ie.Visible = True
ie.Navigate "http://websiteurl"

And that also works okay But it opens a new browser each time and I want it to always calls the same window.

So can i Set ie to equal the same page each time. So instead of

Set ie = New InternetExplorer

It does something like

Set ie = ACTIVE InternetExplorer

(though that doesn't seem to exist). Is there some way of setting ie to be the same as AppActivate ("My Page Title - Internet Explorer") ?

Thanks

Full Code here:

Sub Find_Recordings()
Dim MyAppID, ReturnValue

AppActivate ("My Page Title - Windows Internet Explorer")

SendKeys ("^a")
Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:01"))
SendKeys ("^c")
Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:01"))

AppActivate ("Microsoft Excel")
Sheets("DataSearcher").Select
Range("K1").Select
ActiveSheet.PasteSpecial Format:="Text", Link:=False, DisplayAsIcon: = False

Range("A1").Select

Dim ie As Object
Set ie = New InternetExplorer
ie.Visible = True     ie.Navigate "http://wwwmyurl"

Do Until ie.ReadyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE
Loop

ie.Document.getElementById("searchdata1").Value = Range("J1")
ie.Document.getElementById("library").Value = "RECORDINGS"
ie.Document.searchform.Submit



End Sub

Can you use the MSXML object to post directly to the website and skip the automation altogether - this would be much faster — SWa
– SWa, Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 16:19
I'm not familiar with that. Is that front end or back end? I'm restricted to front end I'm afraid. Just want the macro to copy what a user can do manually, but faster. Cheers — paj
– paj, Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 9:40
It's front End, I posted an example of how to do it here stackoverflow.com/questions/9486847/… Can you post the url of your actual site? — SWa
– SWa, Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 10:23
It's actually an intranet site. Will look at your link, thank you — paj
– paj, Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 15:16
I've tried @Kyle's idea on another problem that I had myself. It didn't work for my specific issue, but I did play with it to get the hang of it, and it is a nice solution. — Gaffi
– Gaffi, Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 17:55

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:56:50Z

1

You could try something like this, drawing heavily on reusing Internet Explorer COM Automation Object to identify an instance of IE with then specific web page active that you are looking for.

Change
strURL = "http://www.theage.com.au/"
to

"My Page Title - Windows Internet Explorer" as necessary

VBA

Sub Test()
Dim ShellApp As Object
Dim ShellWindows As Object
Dim IEObject  As Object
Dim strURL As String
strURL = "http://www.theage.com.au/"
Set ShellApp = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set ShellWindows = ShellApp.Windows()
Dim i
For i = 0 To ShellWindows.Count - 1
    If InStr(ShellWindows.Item(i).FullName, "iexplore.exe") <> 0 Then
        If ShellWindows.Item(i).LocationURL = strURL Then
            Set IEObject = ShellWindows.Item(i)
            MsgBox "IE instance with " & strURL & " found"
            Exit For
        End If
    End If
Next
End Sub

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:56

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Mar 15, 2012 at 12:17

brettdj

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4 Comments

paj Over a year ago

Thanks BrettDJ. I tried this and adjusted the URL as you suggested. Doesn't seem to work though. I'm not sure where it sits and what it replaces in my current code. I've added the full code of the sub in my original question. Further help would be most welcome. Thanks

Gaffi Over a year ago

@brettdj Did you mean to say change strURL to another URL, and not "My Page..."?

brettdj Over a year ago

@paj yes, I meant change StrURL to the url that you wanted to locate as being open in IE

Julien Kronegg Over a year ago

You can find a variant at: mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/…

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