Get highlighted text from active window - c#

I would like to know how can I get highlighted text from any window for example: (excel, ie, firefox,…).
please note that the following message not work in the above application
WM_GETTEXT,WM_COPY,EM_GETSELTEXT.
I have also tried control C (copy) and get selected text from clipboard but it is not a good idea.
Language used: C#

I haven't tried it myself, but the Microsoft UI Automation API should have the functionality that you need.
The UI Automation API is what you would use if you were building a screen reader to assist blind people. So it should definitely be able to access the selected text in an arbitrary application.
A good place to start would be with the "Text Pattern Overview" at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745158.aspx
Also keep your eye on question 517694. I think you'll find that answers to that question will solve your problem.

No answers huh? Well, I know you can get it from Excel, Word etc using interop. Look into that. It might give you som ideas on how to proceed with ie and ff. But basically the recieving application must have some sort of fascility for letting you do this and I don't think there's any general way which works all the time.

There is no general purpose answer to this question. Each window class will have a different solution.
For instance, if the hilighted text is in an edit window, then you can use EM_GETSEL to get the range of the selection, then WM_GETTEXT to get the text (and then throw the unselected part a way) or EM_LINEFROMCHAR to turn that range into line indexes, and then EM_GETLINE to get the selected text one line at a time.
But this won't work for any other window class.

No need to write this in C# from scratch. What's wrong with using the clipboard? This script ensures that it restores what was on the clipboard when it has finished.
Autohotkey makes this much simpler.
; Hotkey: Ctrl Shift t
^!t::
; Remember what was in the clipboard
clipboardPrev = %clipboard%
; Clear the clipboard
clipboard:=
Sleep,200
; Send a Ctrl C to copy the current selection
SendInput, {Ctrl down}c{Ctrl up}
Sleep,200
; Get the current selection from the clipboard
selectedText=%Clipboard%
if SelectedText =
{
; If the first attempt didn't get any test, try again
Sleep,200
; Send a Ctrl C to copy the current selection
SendInput, {Ctrl down}c{Ctrl up}
; Get the current selection from the clipboard
selectedText=%Clipboard%
}
; Restore the clipboard
clipboard=%clipboardPrev%
MsgBox, %selectedText%
return

Related

Change text only temporarily

I want to change the text of a Powerpoint shape only during presentation (i.e. while the slide is shown), but not change the text permanently so that it modifies the PPT file.
Currenty I'm subscribing to the event
Application.SlideShowNextSlide += OnNextSlide;
and then I change the text on one specific shape like this:
shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = "Hello world";
However, when the presentation ends, that text is in the PPT file and Powerpoint asks me whether I want to save the changes.
I want to avoid that my Powerpoint Add-In makes changes to the file.
UPDATE
Based on Steve's answer and your feedback in the comments. So here is an idea for you:
Why don't you just do the code that we mentioned, add Steve's line (it's actually a good way to avoid save questions), and since you'd have restore the original value at the end then just save through programmatic function in C# no matter what. So that even if the user has done any changes you would have saved file...no questions asked ;)
step by step:
1) run like normally
2) add Steve's remark
3) do the trick with the variable change I mentioned bellow
4) do save no matter what at the end of the presentation so that any user changes are saved with the document
code snippet for saving are in this answer very well documented
Remark: Remaining issues with this logic is only when the user does intentional changes and at the end does not want to save the work but this is a case not foreseen above. All the other users will not have to suffer through the "Want to save?" question :)
try to save previous state first and then before moving away or closing re-assign that old value back to it ;)
1st do
String oldValue = shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Text;
if you need to store outside the frame, use IO to store on file temporary or pass the variable on an outside function/variable value. Then do your code
shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = "Hello world";
and after you finish just do again
shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = oldValue;
or read the value from where you left it :)
hope it helps
In addition to the suggestion #oetoni made, you'll want to set the presentation's .Saved state to True after making each change or before allowing the user to quit the show/presentation.
That way, PowerPoint won't think any changes have been made, so won't offer to save the presentation when the user quits.
ActivePresentation.Saved = True

Programmatically Clicking on a Web Page's Button in Windows Forms Application

I am working on a project which is Analysis of Papers from Google Scholar. What I do is basically, parsing the HTML, storing related fields into database etc. However, I am stuck at a point, while I am taking the Titles of the publications, I realized, I am able to get first twenty elements. But, there are sixty papers in related account:
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B7vSqZsAAAAJ
So, I think as a solution, I need to click to the 'show more' button programmatically, so I can have all the Title's, Publication Venue etc.
What do you think? How can I perform that kind of action?
Edit: I checked the 'show more' button, while there is nothing to show as a next page, its html code still remains same. As a solution I can use loop for n times. However, I am looking for more robust solution.
Thank you for your time!
If it is clicking on a button within a WebBrowser control on a Windows Form Application, then 'Yes' you can do it.
There are ways of getting more control over identification by using XPath.
(You might need to use Javascript to use XPath for object interactions - since you haven't asked for that, I will assume you don't need it)
webBrowser.Navigate("http://www.google.com");
// Or
HtmlElement textElement = webBrowser.Document.All.GetElementsByName("q")[0];
textElement.SetAttribute("value", "your text to search");
HtmlElement btnElement = webBrowser.Document.All.GetElementsByName("btnG")[0];
btnElement.InvokeMember("click");
Or even typing into text boxes with
webBrowser1.Document.GetElementById("gs_tti0").InnerText = "hello world";
If its this website specifically, there is a simple workaround. Change the query string to what records you want.
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B7vSqZsAAAAJ&cstart=0&pagesize=2000

Mouse Right Click on WindowsUI DevExpress

Actually, I am have designed an application using WindowsUI(MetroUI) with TileContainers.
Now,My problem is that : I have a text in TextBox and I have selected the text and want to copy it with mouse right click other than ctrl+c.(Because my clients are not aware of the shortcuts).
So,When I'm rightclicking on the textbox with mouse,the TileContainer WindowsUIButtons are sliding from top of the page.
Is there any chance of getting that?
sorry for my bad english :)
If I understand your question correctly then you could just use a Context Menu.
See this URL for a step by step process on doing exactly what it sounds like you are wanting.
Hope this helps.

Setting text of controls on form dynamically

I have a WinForms app that I am currently implementing a translation engine in. What I have so far is a bunch of text documents that follow the syntax like:
messages.manualupdate="There is a manual update available for ProgName.\n\nDo you want to update to version {0}.{1}.{2}{3}?"
messages.errorcopy="Clicking OK will copy the error so you can paste it elsewhere!"
messages.error="Error"
messages.notsupported.title="Unsupported client"
messages.notsupported.message="This version is no long supported. Please wait for an update."
I have lots of these for different languages, for example:
messages.manualupdate="é disponibile un'aggiornamento manuale del programma ProgName.\n\nVuoi aggiornare alla versione {0}.{1}.{2}{3}?"
messages.errorcopy="Cliccando OK eseguirete una copia degli errori visualizzati"
messages.error="Error"
messages.notsupported.title="Client non supportato"
messages.notsupported.message="Questa versione non è utilizzabile al momento. attendi il prossimo aggiornamento!"
I then parse this into a DynamicObject which I can access like language.messages.notsupported.error. What I would like to know is if I can somehow link all the controls on the form to use variables from the dynamic object on creation. For instance I have a button on my form that I want to have the text "Error" in. Before the form shows, I set the language variable to the users chosen language, and then when the form shows it simply loads the text from language. Is there a way to do this in the designer rather than having to write a method that is called in the Forms constructor as it seems to me like a little bit of a waste to set all the button text to a value and then change them all when the form loads. I'm looking for a sort of binding, but to the controls Text parameter.
Anyone have any ideas?
MSDN has a walkthrough on string localization that might be of use to you link
Honestly, the approach you are trying to avoid looks best to me. I will suggest you to create a property for the control where you are trying to set the Text. In Set attribute, check for the language selected and get the appropriate text for you.
public string Error
{
set { _errorLabel.Text = value; }
}
private void SetText()
{
if(EnglishSelected)
Error = "English";
}
Regarding waste of time, well, I will just suggest not to set anything in designer and directly set the property in Load form. But I would like to add one more point here that any of the approach will not hit your application speed. First its about making your application expandable and maintainable and then about making it fast. Setting logical things in designer is always a bad practice. If your application is not tiny/small then I will suggest you to follow some design patterns like MVP and move all this logical things in Presenter. Not trying to preach but just suggesting.
And yes, in our company one of team is working in localization part of the application. Using resource may be a better way of doing this.
Hope it helps.

Broken tables in RichTextBox control (word wrap) [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Why isn’t the richtextbox displaying this table properly?
We are having problems with the Windows.Forms.RichTextBox control in Visual Studio 2008.
We are trying to display text supplied as an RTF file by a 3rd party in a windows forms application (.NET 3.5). In this RTF text file there are tables, which contain text that spans multiple lines. The RTF file displays correctly when opened with either WordPad or Word 2003.
However, when we load the RTF file into the RichTextBox control, or copy & paste the whole text (including the table) into the control, the table does not display correctly - the cells are only single line, without wrapping.
Here are links to images showing the exact problem:
Correctly displayed in WordPad
Incorrectly displayed in RichTextBox control
I have googled for solutions and 3rd party .net RTF controls without success. I have found this exact problem asked on another forum without an answer (in fact that's where the link to the images come from) so I'm hoping stack overflow does better ;-)
My preferred solution would be to use code or a 3rd party control that can correctly render the RTF. However, I suspect the problem is that the RichTextBox control only supports a subset of the full RTF spec, so another option would be to modify the RTF directly to remove the unsupported control codes or otherwise fix the RTF file itself (in which case any information as to what control codes need to be removed or modified would be a huge help).
The Rich Text box from .NET is extremely buggy.
In RTF, the way a table is defined is actually quite different from what you could expect if you are used to HTML.
HTML:
<table>
<tr>
<td>Mycell</td>
</tr>
</table>
In RTF, a table is simply a series of paragraphs with control words defining rows, cells, borders. There is no group tag for the start/end of a table.
RTF:
\trowd\trgraph \cellx1000 Mycell \cell\row\pard\par
If you want to add a paragraph inside a cell, you use \par and the control \intbl (in table) to indicate the paragraph is inside the table.
.NET RTB can handle only a very small subset of RTF control words and doesn't support the vast majority of available commands. By the looks of things, \intbl is part of the long long list of control words it doesn't support, and if it actually parses \par at that point, the display is trashed.
Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for that but I hope the small explanation above helps you make some sense of the problem.
Don't put too much faith on my RTF sample. It works, but it's absolutely bare-bones. You can download the RTF specifications from Microsoft's website:
Word 2007 RTF specs.
Can you use the old COM control instead of the new .NET control, or do you require a "pure" .NET solution?
In other words, go into the Visual Studio toolbox, right click, choose "Choose Items", look in the COM Components tab and check Microsoft Rich Textbox Control 6.0.
Answering my own question here, but only due to the help from Joel and sylverdrag...
The short answer is that both the .Net and underlying COM RichTextBox do not support word wrap in tables. I ended up knocking up a test application and using both the COM and .Net RichTextBox controls and they both exhibited the same (broken) behaviour.
I also downloaded the RTF spec from the link supplied by sylverdrag and after tinkering with hand-made RTF documents in MS Word and RichTextEdit controls, I can confirm that TichTextBox does not correctly support the \intbl control word - which is required for word wrap in tables.
There appear to be three possible solutions:
Use TX Text Control. I have confirmed this works using a trial version but it is expensive - prices start at US$549 per developer.
Use an embedded MS Word instance as discussed on Code Project. Note that the code example provided on Code Project didn't work out of the box but I did get it working with Office 2003 & VS 2008. After much mucking around we hit an unexpected show stopper - we want the document to be read-only so we Protect() the document. While this works, when a user tries to edit the document the MS Word "Protect Document" side bar pops out from the right hand side of the control. We can't live with this and I was not able to turn it off (and from googling it looks like I'm not alone).
Give up on RTF and use HTML instead and then render the document in a WebBrowser control instead of a RichTextEdit control. That is the option we are taking as it turns out the source document is available in either format.
Step 1, Use the old COM Microsoft Rich Textbox Control 6.0;
Step 2, Make a copy of Windows\System32\MsftEdit.dll and then rename it to riched20.dll;
Step 3, Copy riched20.dll to your app folder such as bin\bebug.
This works fine, table displays correctly.
Wordpad is generally a very thin wrapper over the rich edit control, so if it appears properly there then Windows should be able to handle it.
Perhaps you're instantiating the wrong version of the rich edit control? There have been many, and Windows continues to supply the older ones for backwards compatibility. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb787873(VS.85).aspx
Just create a new Control. It works fine for me.
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
public class RichTextBox5 : RichTextBox {
private static IntPtr moduleHandle;
protected override CreateParams CreateParams {
get {
if (moduleHandle == IntPtr.Zero) {
moduleHandle = LoadLibrary("msftedit.dll");
if ((long)moduleHandle < 0x20) throw new Win32Exception(Marshal.GetLastWin32Error(), "Could not load Msftedit.dll");
}
CreateParams createParams = base.CreateParams;
createParams.ClassName = "RichEdit50W";
if (this.Multiline) {
if (((this.ScrollBars & RichTextBoxScrollBars.Horizontal) != RichTextBoxScrollBars.None) && !base.WordWrap) {
createParams.Style |= 0x100000;
if ((this.ScrollBars & ((RichTextBoxScrollBars)0x10)) != RichTextBoxScrollBars.None) {
createParams.Style |= 0x2000;
}
}
if ((this.ScrollBars & RichTextBoxScrollBars.Vertical) != RichTextBoxScrollBars.None) {
createParams.Style |= 0x200000;
if ((this.ScrollBars & ((RichTextBoxScrollBars)0x10)) != RichTextBoxScrollBars.None) {
createParams.Style |= 0x2000;
}
}
}
if ((BorderStyle.FixedSingle == base.BorderStyle) && ((createParams.Style & 0x800000) != 0)) {
createParams.Style &= -8388609;
createParams.ExStyle |= 0x200;
}
return createParams;
}
}
// P/Invoke declarations
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
private static extern IntPtr LoadLibrary(string path);
}
This is not a issue of RitchText Control provided in .net . some Ritchtext rules (Ritchtext Synatax) has been changed in new version of Ms-office (2007). however the component used in .net cannot update to cater the new rules so the issue occours.
Anand

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