Excel/web page interaction automation

[ryuuseki]

I have a really monotonous repetitive task that needs to be run multiple times. The basic work flow is as follows:

Copy cell b3 of work sheet

paste into text entry box of website

press submit button

click website button once to bring down drop down menu

click on generate pdf

wait 10 seconds

click save as button in embedded acrobat

copy cell c3

paste into file name box

click save

wait 20 seconds

click link at top of page

click sidebar item

wait 5 seconds

click link

wait 5 seconds

click link

wait 5 seconds

Copy cell b4 of work sheet

continued.

I tried to get a feel for the syntaxes being used using autoit recorder, but on playback the actions were happening way too quickly to be of use. I am not a programmer, the last thing I coded was in basic in the early 1990's (outside of html) but I do know about basic UI stuff. I am comfortable with pulling the co-ordinates for the links (I would just keep the window position static for IE) and would prefer to use those instead of trying to pull methods or action classes, as this is a very finicky closed source java web app. The waits are critical, because the site is excruciatingly slow.

I am not even sure of where to start, what functions to use, things like that. If there are any tutorials covering what I need, I haven't been able to find them (the video tutorial site on the wiki isn't working either)

[PsaltyDS]

See the _Excel* and _IE* functions in the help file. There are example scripts under the functions. The help file also contains some basic tutorials, and there is a decent wiki for many topics.

Welcome to AutoIt.

P.S. And, of course, The AutoIt 1-2-3 tutorial linked in my sig.

Edited July 13, 2011 by PsaltyDS