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Having trouble clicking on a drop down tab on a website


Hey all, 

 

I need to go to a certain screen of a website, however, to get to this screen you have to click on a tab, which creates a drop down box of links that you can click on, and then click on the link you want. The manual process looks somewhat like this:

 

Hover mouse of 'Inquiry' tab >  scroll down drop box > click on link

 

When replicated in Foxtrot it misses the link I want to click on for some reason.

 

Also, when you click on the link, it doesnt create a new webpage with a different URL, so you can't bypass this by just coding the bot to go straight to that URL. Anyone have any advice on how to get through this?

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Best answer by Aaron_Bultman 2 March 2020, 17:32

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6 replies

Hi fshah,


 


You will need to use the Mouse Recorder for these multi-stepped mouse interactions.  To start the Mouse Recorder, click 'Record Mouse...' on the 'Tools' menu.  This will cause the window to disappear and a recorder window to appear.  You can record a 'Hover' by simply moving your mouse over the menu and stop moving your cursor.  You will see a countdown in the recorder window.  After a 5 second countdown, a 'Hover' Action will be recorded.  All other clicks can be performed manually while the recorder is running.  These clicks will be recorded automatically.  Click "Stop" on the recorder window once all mouse steps have been completed.  In the end, a "Mouse Sequence" Action will be created.  Editing this Action will reveal the individual Actions (Clicks, Hovers, etc) that were recorded.  You can edit each of these Actions to tune the Rules if needed (to handle the dynamic URL).  Let us know how it goes!

@Aaron_Bultman 


 


Thanks for the response. When the mouse moves to hover over the 'Inquiry' tab, the mouse turns into the hourglass icon so the drown down menu doesn't appear so i cannot click on the link. Not sure why this is happening

You can try a couple of things to work around this behavior in your target application.


 


1. Try clicking the 'Inquiry' tab while the recorder is on.  Often times a Click will give you the same result as a Hover.


 


2.  Alternatively, turn on the Mouse Recorder and as your first recorded step try clicking the titlebar of the window.  This will make the application the active window and your mouse activity may behave more accuractly.

First option worked. Thanks!

Excellent!

Is there a way to work with a drop down and search for text from within the dropdown?  From my data file I have an addenda number and I need to chose the correct one from the dropdown list.  Is this possible within a script?

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