Accessing web controls using IE

[bigmack]

I am looking into auto filling out forms consisting of textboxes and checkboxes using IE. The problem that I am running into is when I come across a webpage with frames and I am unable to view the html source code. Can you please point me in the right direction? Thanks!

[Leith Ross]

Hello bigmack,

Each frame is a window that contains a WebBrowser object. For security, you can only control the WebBrowser object, if you are hosting it. Both VB and VBA are denied access to other objects in any frame other than the main window. Accessing the Document of a Frame will only return the HEAD, BODY, and HTML tags. You need to use another language like VC++ or Java to access the contents of the frames.

[Chippy]

I'm not sure why you can't view the HTML source, as both IE and Firefox can display the HTML source of a frame, but only Firefox, it seems, can display the HTML source of the frameset.

You could access the form elements using the HTML Object Library in VBA. The frameset is a HTMLDocument object and each frame is a IHTMLWindow object. HTMLDocument.frames is the collection of frames.

[Leith Ross]

Hello Chippy,

It won't work for the reason I stated above. VBA can not access other objects in any frame other than the main window. Only the server side application can return the HTML code from a frame.