Control IE website's "TEXTAREA" - Read & Replace value with VBA in excel.

**R_S_6** · 07-23-2012, 05:24 AM

Hi All,

I am using vba to navigate internet explorer 8 (IE) to a webpage then find a HTML "textarea" then read and replace the value in this text area with a variable from my macro.

So far I have the following that works (see below) - The problem is that I cannot replace the "textarea" value. I can select the text area and read the value but not write to it.

Sub Add_Users_Test2()
Dim test As String
    Dim IE As Object, TB As Object

    Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
    
        With IE
            .Visible = True
            .Navigate "URL_HERE"
        Do Until .readyState = 4: DoEvents: Loop
            
        Set objCollection = IE.Document.getElementsByTagName("textarea")
        
        i = 0
        While i < objCollection.Length
            testname = objCollection(i).Name
            testvalue = objCollection(i).Value
            If objCollection(i).Name = "ctl00$PlaceHolderMain$ctl00$ctl01$userPicker$downlevelTextBox" Then
                Set objElement = objCollection(i)
                objElement.Click
                'objCollection(i).outerHTML = "Test"
                
            Else
            End If
            i = i + 1
        Wend
    
        End With

                    
End Sub

I can get round the above using sendkeys but I am having all sorts of issues with this method - It jumbles and adds letters to my predefined Variable - Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't e.g.

Var1 = "LTest"
the Sendkeys version (or one of them) => "LLLTesst"

Anyone provide any input in how to write a value to the text area??

I have tried so far with no luck - The following dont do anything...

'try 1
objElement.value= "Test"

'try 2
objCollection(i).value= "Test"

'try 3
objElement.innerHTML= "Test"

'try 4
objCollection(i).innerHTML= "Test"

Thanks in advance...

**Chippy** · 07-23-2012, 12:29 PM

If you can read the current textarea value, then try 1 or 2 should work, but not if the readonly attribute is set. Without knowing the URL or the HTML it's difficult to help further. Try writing code for this page - http://www.tizag.com/htmlT/htmltextarea.php.

**R_S_6** · 07-25-2012, 02:18 AM

I did reply to this but it seemly did not work - ended up with a blank page!

*

Thanks for your reply Chippy.

*

Bit more info around the issue. Its a Sharepoint Site (2007) and I am trying to automate the people picker to add new users to a permissions group.

With regard to read and write - It has never thrown up an issues in the macro reading the textarea value, but as this starts out life empty it always simply returns "". The fact that you can click the text area and input (type) a user into the area surely means its definitely not 'readonly'? HTML below...