I have been trying a workaround for this, for quite a long time, but haven't found one yet.
On calling Documents.Close(), Word, which was opened with visible = false, becomes visible.
This is my close statement (document is already saved so no need to save again):
WordApp.Documents.Close(Word.WdSaveOptions.wdDoNotSaveChanges,
Word.WdOriginalFormat.wdOriginalDocumentFormat);
You could just call WordApp.Quit().
Office apps still follow the MDI approach: You run 1 App and in that app you can open 1 or more documents.
It's easy to lose track of that App in the background as we usually only open one document. But there are two levels of Close here.
You could also explicitly set WordApp.Visible = false immediately after the operation; this might cause a brief flash, but should set the application back to invisible.
To avoid the brief flash of visibility, sometimes using the WordApp.ScreenUpdating property as well can help. Set it to false before attempting the Documents.Close() call, then reset to true after that's complete.
The accepted solution (calling WordApp.Quit()) was not a viable option for me. I tried setting
WordApp.ScreenUpdating = false
immediately prior to calling Documents.Close() and that did not help either - I still got the screen flash.
I then tried setting
WordApp.ActiveWindow.Visible = false
immediately after opening the document. That did not make any difference either.
Finally I tried setting
WordApp.ActiveWindow.Top = -5000
(so as to move the window display well out of the visible desktop area in my monitor setup - if you have an unusual (giant!) monitor setup that might not work for you, adjust accordingly) and that solved the problem - no more flashing.
An annoying hack, but worked in my case.
None of above comments work for me. I tried with:
WordApp.ActiveWindow.Top = -5000
But my program terminates with "active window is maximized" exception.
I ultimately resolved it by following call before invoke Document.Close():
m_word.ActiveWindow.WindowState = WdWindowState.wdWindowStateMinimize;
It's a perfect solution for me. Hope it would work for you as well.
Using the ActiveDocument.Close() method will not show the window.
WordApp.ActiveDocument.Close(saveChanges: false);
None of the above solutions worked for me.
I finally realized that for me it was the AutoOpen macro that was the problem. Every time a Word document was opened, AutoOpen would make the ActiveDocument.Visible = False, run some changes (like opening the style pane), then turn ActiveDocument.Visible = True at the end.
This final line in AutoOpen is what caused every document to briefly flash on the screen. Removing both ActiveDocument.Visible = False and ActiveDocument.Visible = True from the AutoOpen macro solved the issue.
Related
The issue:
We have an application written in C# that uses UIAutomation to get the current text (either selected or the word behind the carret) in other applications (Word, OpenOffice, Notepad, etc.).
All is working great on Windows 10, even up to 21H2, last update check done today.
But we had several clients informing us that the application is closing abruptly on Windows 11.
After some debugging I've seen some System.AccessViolationException thrown when trying to use the TextPatternRange.GetText() method:
System.AccessViolationException: 'Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.'
What we've tried so far:
Setting uiaccess=true in manifest and signing the app : as mentionned here https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsdesktop/en-US/350ceab8-436b-4ef1-8512-3fee4b470c0a/problem-with-manifest-and-uiaccess-set-to-true?forum=windowsgeneraldevelopmentissues => no changes (app is in C:\Program Files\
In addition to the above, I did try to set the level to "requireAdministrator" in the manifest, no changes either
As I've seen that it may come from a bug in Windows 11 (https://forum.emclient.com/t/emclient-9-0-1317-0-up-to-9-0-1361-0-password-correction-crashes-the-app/79904), I tried to install the 22H2 Preview release, still no changes.
Reproductible example
In order to be able to isolate the issue (and check it was not something else in our app that was causing the exception) I quickly made the following test (based on : How to get selected text of currently focused window? validated answer)
private void btnRefresh_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var p = Process.GetProcessesByName("notepad").FirstOrDefault();
var root = AutomationElement.FromHandle(p.MainWindowHandle);
var documentControl = new
PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.ControlTypeProperty,
ControlType.Document);
var textPatternAvailable = new PropertyCondition(AutomationElement.IsTextPatternAvailableProperty, true);
var findControl = new AndCondition(documentControl, textPatternAvailable);
var targetDocument = root.FindFirst(TreeScope.Descendants, findControl);
var textPattern = targetDocument.GetCurrentPattern(TextPattern.Pattern) as TextPattern;
string text = "";
foreach (var selection in textPattern.GetSelection())
{
text += selection.GetText(255);
Console.WriteLine($"Selection: \"{selection.GetText(255)}\"");
}
lblFocusedProcess.Content = p.ProcessName;
lblSelectedText.Content = text;
}
When pressing a button, this method is called and the results displayed in labels.
The method uses UIAutomation to get the notepad process and extract the selected text.
This works well in Windows 10 with latest update, crashes immediately on Windows 11 with the AccessViolationException.
On Windows 10 it works even without the uiaccess=true setting in the manifest.
Questions/Next steps
Do anyone know/has a clue about what can cause this?
Is Windows 11 way more regarding towards UIAutomation?
On my side I'll probably open an issue by Microsoft.
And one track we might follow is getting an EV and sign the app itself and the installer as it'll also enhance the installation process, removing the big red warnings. But as this is an app distributed for free we had not done it as it was working without it.
I'll also continue testing with the reproductible code and update this question should anything new appear.
I posted the same question on MSDN forums and got this answer:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/915789/uiautomation-throws-accessviolationexception-on-wi.html
Using IUIautomation instead of System.Windows.Automation works on Windows 11.
So I'm marking this as solved but if anyone has another idea or knows what happens you're welcome to comment!
When a file is saved (on purpose) I would like to perform a certain action.
This all works with the following code:
Application.DocumentBeforeSave += new word.ApplicationEvents4_DocumentBeforeSaveEventHandler(ThisAddIn_BeforeSave);
There is only one problem, this event also fires when a change is made to the document and the 'Autorecover' function saves this change.
Is there a way to circumvent this action or at least detect if it was an auto-save?
So I've managed to find the answer to this question on this site.
Essentially, this makes use of the VBA properties of a Word application I assume.
object oBasic = Application.WordBasic;
object fIsAutoSave =
oBasic.GetType().InvokeMember(
"IsAutosaveEvent",
BindingFlags.GetProperty,
null, oBasic, null);
if (int.Parse(fIsAutoSave.ToString()) == 1)
MessageBox.Show("Is AutoSave");
else
MessageBox.Show("Is regular save");
This solution seems to work for office 2007 and up.
I noticed that when I start up IE in SeleniumWebdriver with
var ieoptions = new InternetExplorerOptions()
{
EnablePersistentHover = false,
EnsureCleanSession = true,
RequireWindowFocus = true,
};
I have this -noframemerging flag in my IE command line. I don't want this flag
After some digging I managed to find that I can seemingly take it out by adding
ForceCreateProcessApi = true,
BrowserCommandLineArguments = "-framemerging"
but that would only work with an accompanying regedit for
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main = 0
I'd prefer to keep my IE working in the same way in manual and automated tests - i.e. not messing about with the number of processes in play. So is there an easier solution available here? I find it hard to understand why the -noframemerging flag is turned on by IEServerDriver
No, there is no easier solution here. IEDriverServer.exe does nothing to modify the command line used to launch IE. If a switch is being added to the command line, it's being done by the Windows IELaunchURL API, which is what the driver uses by default to launch the browser to be able to accommodate Protected Mode. The way to have "control" over what command line is used is with the CreateProcessAPI, and you've already discovered how to make the driver do that. "Control" is deliberately put in scare quotes here because unfortunately, CreateProcess isn't reliable with IE unless you use the registry entry. Moreover, IE doesn't have the concept of user profiles, and your desire to maintain the browser's behavior for your non-WebDriver use is exactly why the driver doesn't set registry entries for you.
I'am running across this issue when I'm debugging or running my coded UI automation project, where i get the exception labeled "{"COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used." System.Exception {System.Runtime.InteropServices.InvalidComObjectException}" everytime i come from a browser window that contains a pdf reader embedded in it. This happens every time I retrieve the window and try to click back. It barfs when i perform the back method on it. I've tried different things but none has worked including the playback wait.
var hereIsmypdf = ReturnPDFDoc();
public BrowserWindow ReturnPDFDoc()
{
Playback.Wait(1000);
var myPdFdoc = GlobalVariables.Browser;
return myPdFdoc;
}
hereIsmypdf.Back();
The only way i was able to get around this issue was not to use the BrowserWindow class. I ended up using the WinWindow class and just getting the tab of the window from it. The BrowserWindow class seemed to trigger the exception "COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used." System.Exception {System.Runtime.InteropServices.InvalidComObjectException}" everytime i tried to retrieve it. I hope this helps someone one or maybe someone has a better way to handle this issue.
For the people that voted my question down, i really did try to figure it out. Sorry i wasnt clear about what i was asking the community or couldn't properly articulate what this pain was. I'm sure someone probably is going through the same pain i did and having a hard time articulating whats going on.
Here is my code on what i ended up doing
public WinTabPage ReturnPDFDoc()
{
WinWindow Wnd = new WinWindow();
Wnd.SearchProperties[BrowserWindow.PropertyNames.ClassName] = "IEFrame";
WinTabList tabRoWlist = new WinTabList(Wnd);
tabRoWlist.SearchProperties[WinTabPage.PropertyNames.Name] = "Tab Row";
WinTabPage myTab = new WinTabPage(tabRoWlist);
myTab.SearchConfigurations.Add(SearchConfiguration.AlwaysSearch);
myTab.SearchProperties[WinTabPage.PropertyNames.Name] = "something";
//UITestControlCollection windows = newWin.FindMatchingControls();
return myTab;
}
I am trying to create a UI test in VS 2010 using IE 9 in IE 8 compatibilty mode however when trying to record an action recording many of the steps fail. Then when I manually code in the missing steps and try to fill in a log in form with a username and password I get an exception that says I have failed to perform an action on hidden control.
The UI Test code:
public void Recordedmethod()
{
BrowserWindow uILogInWindowsInternetWindow = this.UILogInWindowsInternetWindow;
HtmlHyperlink uILogInHyperlink = this.UILogInWindowsInternetWindow.UIHomePageDocument.UILogInHyperlink;
HtmlEdit uIUsernameEdit = this.UILogInWindowsInternetWindow.UILogInDocument1.UIUsernameEdit;
HtmlEdit uIPasswordEdit = this.UILogInWindowsInternetWindow.UILogInDocument1.UIPasswordEdit;
#endregion
// Go to web page 'http://localhost:15856/WebSite1/'
uILogInWindowsInternetWindow.NavigateToUrl(new System.Uri(this.RecordedMethodParams.UILogInWindowsInternetWindowUrl));
// Set flag to allow play back to continue if non-essential actions fail. (For example, if a mouse hover action fails.)
Playback.PlaybackSettings.ContinueOnError = true;
// Mouse hover 'Log In' link at (1, 1)
Mouse.Click(uILogInHyperlink);
// Reset flag to ensure that play back stops if there is an error.
Playback.PlaybackSettings.ContinueOnError = false;
// Type 'test' in 'Username:' text box
uIUsernameEdit.Text = this.RecordedMethodParams.UIUsernameEditText;
// The following element is no longer available: IE web control; Process Id [6320], window handle [3168166]
// Type '********' in 'Password:' text box
uIPasswordEdit.Password = this.RecordedMethodParams.UIPasswordEditPassword;
// The following element is no longer available: IE web control; Process Id [6320], window handle [3168166]
}
This is an issue linked to an Internet Explorer patch that was released in September.
KB2870699
This affects VS2010 and VS2012.
Microsoft released a patch that corrects the issue for VS2012 (and I've confirmed that it fixed the issue for me).
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/09/17/coded-ui-mtm-issues-on-internet-explorer-with-kb2870699.aspx
Currently the only workaround for VS2010 is to uninstall the patch (KB2870699); however, as with any sort of security patch you'll want to consider carefully whether pulling it is safe to do given your situation.
EDIT: This was not a fun bug for me to deal with. I had just upgraded to VS2012 from VS2010 and all of a sudden I found none of my previously functioning CodedUI tests working. I assumed it was an issue with VS2012 and after banging my head against the wall for the better part of a day I found out it was an issue with a patch. It was just my luck that I upgraded to 2012 at the same time the patch had been installed on my system. Good times!
There is actually an updated for VS 2012 to fix this issue
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/09/17/coded-ui-mtm-issues-on-internet-explorer-with-kb2870699.aspx
Hope this helps!
I was having the same problem with my coded ui test. It's an issue with VS-2012 i guess, i tried every update (installing/uninstalling them and everything..) nothing worked.
I tried VS-2013 Ultimate and it worked.
You can use exception handling to capture the error while still not having the test failed.
The test is failing because at the time it performs click action, the control is hidden.
try
{
//your code goes here
}
catch(FailedToPerformActionOnHiddenControlException e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
}