Can Autoit control existing windows programs ?

[smallhagrid]

I have been searching for some time now to do in XP what used to be fairly easy to do in DOS with a simple batch file.

Can Autoit do this type of stuff and control windows programs somehow?

If so, I would greatly appreciate help and guidance as I have very little experience with it from a while back when I tried to do another idea with it and did not succeed well at all.

(This may have been asked (& answered ?) a zillion times but the search terms for it are so general that any I've tried bring far too many & varied hits - very frustrating !!!)

Background:

There is a program I use all day long and it's data resides in a single, large file.

I work at 2 different locations and sometimes also on the road and need current data.

In the best of days I remember to copy the file to my USB stick and an FTP location; but too often I get busy and forget.

I would like to automate this process:

1. Call a pre-defined sync job to make sure the newest file is on hand locally.

2. Once that is assured, open the program that uses the file.

3. When the program later closes, run a 2nd sync job replacing the remote file with the newer local version.

I am presuming I can define a sync job well enough in 'Beyond Compare' for it to simply be called externally as it does this sort of thing very well...

I hope I've described this well enough ?

It seems to just be 3 simple steps, but finding a really good method to do this has perplexed me despite searching many times.

Thanks.

[stormbreaker]

You could have a look at FileGetTime in help file. Compare the times of both files and then copy the newer one to usb