How To Debug Send Hotkeys

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How to debug Send hotkeys ?

Issue Overview:

When using Send Hot keys the messages fail, or the activity does not seem to work.

Troubleshooting Steps:

  1. Read more on the working of SendWindowMessages and test the Send Hot key activity with SendWindowsMessages option enabled or disabled.
  2. Send Windows hotkeys should not be affected by resolution. Keep this in mind when troubleshooting automations that use this activity.
  3. If the issue is intermittent, try the following
    1. Use the activity “Highlight” before the automation, to identify which element has the focus of the screen
    2. If it happens intermittently in Unattended mode, try taking a screenshot after highlighting the active element but before sending the hotkey. This way it can be verified that the correct element was active.
  4. If the issue happens in Unattended mode, try using one of the following tools to troubleshoot it,
  1. Try adjusting the properties of the activity
    1. Activate – Try disabling. For example, when using send hotkeys in an Excel application, having activate set to true can cause activities requiring sequential sets of messages to fail. ( if the sequence of hotkeys “Alt+H” and “Alt+N” is used as two separate activities on Excel, different behavior will be seen if Activate is set to True vs False. With Activate set to true, the sequence well end with the Insert menu in Excel displayed. When set to false, the formatting drop down will be selected. Try it with Slow Step.)
    2. Adjust delay between keys – Cases are noticed where applications ignore keys if they are clicked too quickly in succession. A delay prevents this.
  2. If it is possible to produce the issue in Studio, try running the automation in slow step
    1. This can be helpful in troubleshooting issues involving input.