Capturing text from a control that apparently has no text?

[Asamoya]

Hi guys,

I've got a bit of a problem regarding text capture.

I use a program at work that displays various bits of information in tables, quite similar to excel.

Data is displayed in cells/tables, and the individual cells containing data can be selected as you would in excel.

However you cannot edit the data in any cell, and you cannot copy and paste any data from the cells either.

When using the Autoit Window Info tool, the whole table and the surrounding buttons all appear as one control, with no text from the cells/table whatsoever being displayed in any of the Window Info sections (nothing in the "text" or "hidden text" sections).

The base database from which the data is drawn from is also heavily encrypted, so data cannot be captured from the database files themselves.

So my problem is, how can I possibly capture the text from these cells?

If there really is no way, then I do have a second plan which is a bit more troublesome to put into place (involves printing the tables via the windows "generic text only printer driver", changing the port to "file" so a text file of the tables is created instead -along with a lot of other nonsense characters unfortunately. And then capturing the relevant text via notepad using a loooong series of steps that I haven't tested at all. >.>)

Any ideas for me?

Thanks

[BitByteBit]

You could use OCR, more specifically

Edited November 4, 2011 by BitByteBit

[Asamoya]

Thanks, will give it a shot and report back!