Element exists does not work, and I'm out of options to fiddle with

I am trying to use the activity “Element Exists” on a JavaScript Modal, and it’s not working. I’m using IE because it’s not even supported in Firefox or Chrome yet, though they seem to be working on it (even though modals are older than UIPath).

As far as the selector, I have tried all 3 different blocks that the selection tool recognizes (whole window, main pane, text in the middle), and they always fail.

I see a lot of people complaining about this, but I don’t see many solutions. Why doesn’t this work? Is it not going to work at all? I don’t understand why this is not working properly.

The validate and highlight buttons give me feedback such that the bot should work.

Hi @Robot.Builder.9001,

You need to make the selector work for all possible scenarios. In your case, Copy the selector to the notepad and run again, when it fails use indicate element and copy the selector again to the notepad. Now, Compare both definitively there may be a difference. Make it generic then the bot will work fine.

Thanks and Regards,
Ranjith Udayakumar

I like that trick.

But sadly, I had already been keeping on eye on the selector to see if it would change, so in this case, the selector works fine, and is identical when I run it again.

Can you please share the selector at two different runs? If it is public website share the URL, I can check it out…

@Robot.Builder.9001 Whenever you fail to get results with element exists,try using get attribute activity…It gives more robust answers as it has many attributes to arrive at decisions…

It’s part of the Level 3 training class, so the URL is: ACME System 1 - Log In

Then enter “FR121212” in the Vendor TaxID, select February, then 2019, and you will get the popup.

What’s weird is it worked a couple of times yesterday or the day before.

I switched to “Image Exists” and it’s still not working.

Did you try get attribute with “Inner text” or any other options?.. It will give some meaningful ouput i believe

I believe I did this simply by checking for the OK button in the dialogue with:

<wnd app='iexplore.exe' cls='#32770' title='Message from webpage' />
<wnd ctrlid='2' title='OK' />

After a few other things today, I tried that, and it’s not working. I also tried looking for the exclamation mark icon (as an image and as an element), and using text exists.

I don’t understand why it’s so hard to work with javascript modals. This is impossible-level for a training course. This is the kind of thing that the UIPath developers would be doing / would have done as they are building UIpath studio and the first generation activities.

I don’t think I’m off in the weeds, but this sure seems like it.

I copied and pasted this selector into mine… no change. However, before I did that, it was already the same thing.