Process system modal print dialog

[HudsonKane]

We are trying to automate some printing tasks for an application that we do not control.  When the "Save Print Output As" dialog appears, it is system modal.  The user cannot click to the desktop or activate any other windows.  Our script also stops at this point.  Is there anyway to handle this type of dialog?  I am guessing not, but wanted to get confirmation.

Thank you

[Jos]

Just add an adlib function which checks for the window and act on it when it appears.

Jos

[HudsonKane]

Thank you.  I have set this up, and I can see the function being called by updating the display in a ProgressSet() call however my

if WinExists("Save Print Output As") Then

check never returns true.  I will continue to investigate and post back anything I find

[Jos]

Have you checked with au3info what the exact text is for the window or visible text in the window to ensure it is correct?

Jos

[HudsonKane]

I can't activate au3info as the dialog is system model.  I will try to enumerate through all windows to see if I am missing something

Thank you

[HudsonKane]

WinGetTitle("[active]") shows the active window title as the main window, not the print dialog, will keep looking

[HudsonKane]

My progress bar shows my AdlibRegister() function being accessed, and I send keystrokes to the active window, but nothing happens.  I have tried moving the mouse to where the buttons are and sending a mouse click, pressing escape, and sending text, but no automated activity seems to be making it to the print dialog.  This is a .NET application, so that may be part of the issue?

[Jos]

Is the print dialog running with Admin mode and have your tried running the script as Adminitrator?

Jos

[HudsonKane]

neither is run as admin, the process is being run via remote desktop and we currently do not have access to admin rights.  I will try to get this access and try again.

Thank you

[jdelaney]

For modal clicks, I send the controlclick as another process...Like this from the helpfile:

Run(@AutoItExe & ' /AutoIt3ExecuteLine "MsgBox(4096, ''Hello World!'', ''Hi!'')"')

Then that new process get's deadlocked while your script proceeds.

Edited February 28, 2017 by jdelaney

[HudsonKane]

Thank you for the suggestion, but running automation through a new process does not work either.  I can see that the script continues through a progress display and logging to a file, but no screen actions or Send() commands appear to work.  If I create a top most dialog it still appears behind the print dialog until I manually close the print dialog.  I am thinking this all may be due to running via remote desktop, but am not sure yet

Edited February 28, 2017 by HudsonKane

[HudsonKane]

I see the issue now....the print dialog is displaying on the main PC, not the remote desktop pc.  I will have to investigate this further

[HudsonKane]

To finish this thread off...

The remote desktop session was not allowed to use printing resources on that PC (windows 2008 server), it was only allowed to access Local printing resources.

The two pc's do have access to the same mapped network location so..

To overcome this we created 2 scripts.

Process #1
on the main pc we have a listener that waits for the "print save output as" dialog, it then gets the desired file name from a flag file created by process #2
then writes out a "process complete" flag file

Process #2
performs all the processing to get to the item to print, writes our a flag file with the desired file name, and calls up the print dialog
waits until a "process complete" flag file exists, then removes it and carries on