Using Macros for Internet Explorer Control

**PaulAS** · 09-07-2010, 03:06 PM

Hi, I am creating an excel document that automatically log's into a webpage and copies data back to a spread sheet. I can login and copy the data back to excel but I have the following problems:

1. After logging in I run another macro to retrieve data but it opens another explorer window. How do you use an explorer window already open? I am opening explorer using CODE: Set ie = CreateObject("Internetexplorer.Application")

2. How can you check the url of the page you are currently on, or on multiple explorer windows? and can you use a wild key? for example "www.google.com/*"

I am a little new to this, not sure if the answer is simple and infront of me.

Thanks in advance for any help.

**romperstomper** · 09-07-2010, 04:45 PM

1. Just use ie again.
2. Not sure what you mean - if you are automating IE, you should know what page you're on.

**PaulAS** · 09-08-2010, 12:51 PM

1. I have a button on my main page to login to a website, there are other buttons on the same page that either display a web page or copy data back to excel. Once I have clicked login button the screen goes back to excel and if the user clicks a button to display a particular web page it creates another explorer window. Once the user has finished with the excel document it can leave multiple windows open which i would like to prevent but I don't want to close all intances of internet explorer either just incase they have other work open.

2. I would like to check the url of the page because if the user trys to login but already is logged in the page gets redirected also the website has a login timeout (which is way to short) and if the user clicks a button to view the web page while logged out it will direct to the login screen and stop, I would like to check the url for this and set it to run the login macro before re-routing to the web page. As for the wild key I was thinking I could check all instances of explorer open on the website and close when loggin out using the answer from 1.

Thanks

**romperstomper** · 09-08-2010, 03:58 PM

If you are creating the explorer windows in your code, you should keep the references to each instance in a Collection; then, when your app exits, you can loop through the collection and just terminate the instances that you opened.
To check the url, you can access the ie.document.url