Loop Windows Action

Loop Windows

Loops through all of the Windows that are currently open on the system. The variable specified is updated with the current window title. With each successive loop, the next window title is retrieved. The loop ends after the window title of all the open windows have been retrieved or when a Break is encountered. Ideally used to perform one or more actions on every window that is open on the system.

Declaration

To set Loop Windows properties

In the Available Actions pane, open the Loop folder and double-click the Loop Windows action or drag it into the Steps pane.
In the Populate variable with window title box, select the variable to populate.
If you want to include invisible windows, select Include hidden windows.
Click the Advanced tab.
Use either the Include windows or the Exclude windows box to enter all or part of the window titles that you want to include or ignore. You can use asterisk (*) and question mark (?) as wildcard characters. For example *Microsoft Word would specify all MS Word windows.

If you make an entry in the Include windows box, all windows that do not match your entry will be ignored. If you make an entry in the Exclude windows box, the specified windows will be ignored, and all other open windows will be included.
If you want to populate a variable with window handle data, select Populate variable with window handle, and then select the variable from the drop-down list. (The variable must be created in an earlier step using the Create Variable action.)
To place the window title, class, and handle in a dataset, select Create and populate dataset, and then enter a name for the dataset in the box below. (Dataset names must be alphanumeric, begin with a letter, and contain no spaces.)
If you want the windows looped in ascending or descending alphabetical order, make your selection in the Sorting box.
To set the Description tab properties, refer to Description Tab Options.
To set the Error Causes and On Error tab properties, refer to Step Error Handling.
When finished, click OK to save settings and close the properties dialog box.

To auto-indent after all steps are added

In the Steps pane, hold down SHIFT and click the first and last steps in the block so that the complete block of steps is selected.
Click Format .

General Tab

Property	Type	Required	Default	Markup	Description
Populate Variable with Window Title	Text	Yes	(Empty)	RESULTVARIABLE="varname"	The name of the variable that should be populated with the current window title upon each successive loop.
Include Hidden Windows	Yes/No	No	No	ALLOWHIDDEN="yes"	If set to YES, invisible (or hidden) windows should be included in the loop results.

Attributes Tab

Property	Type	Required	Default	Markup	Description
Include Windows	Text	No	(Empty)	INCLUDE="*Explorer"	Indicates a wildcard mask to designate the titles of windows to be included in the loop. For example, if "Internet Explorer" was specified, the loop would only include window titles ending with the text Internet Explorer. Asterisk () or question mark (?) can be used as wildcard characters.
Exclude Windows	Text	No	(Empty)	EXCLUDE="*Explorer"	Specifies a wildcard mask to designate the titles of the windows to be excluded from the loop. For example, if "Internet Explorer" was specified, the loop would include all window titles except those ending with the text Internet Explorer. Asterisk () or question mark (?) can be used as wildcard characters.
Populate Variable with Window Handle	Text	No	Disabled	WINDOWHANDLEVARIABLE="Var1"	If enabled, indicates the name of the variable that should be populated with the current window handle upon each successive loop. This parameter is disabled by default.
Create and Populate Dataset	Text	No	Disabled	RESULTDATASET="theDataset"	If enabled, indicates the name of a dataset to be created and populated with data about each window being looped. In addition to the standard dataset fields, this dataset contains specific action specific fields entered below. This parameter is disabled by default.
Sorting	Text (options)	No	None	SORT="ascending"	Specifies whether a sort order should be applied to the window titles before loop begins. The available options are: Do not sort list (default) Sort the list in ascending alphabetical order Sort the list in descending alphabetical order

Description Tab

The Description tab allows you to customize the text description of any step as it appears in the Task Builder's Steps Pane.

Error Causes Tab

The Error Causes tab allows you to select/omit specific errors that should cause a particular step to fail.

On Error Tab

The On Error tab allows you to determine what the task should do if a particular step encounters an error.

More about On Error properties

Dataset

A dataset is a multiple column, multiple row container object. For example, in a SQL Query action, the fields contained within the created dataset are determined by the query that was executed. For example if the following query is executed:

SELECT firstname, lastname, company from customer where city='Los Angeles';

Then the following dataset would be generated (where datasetname specifies the name of the dataset):

datasetname.firstname

datasetname.lastname

datasetname.company

A record (row) is created for each record (row) that is retrieved from the server. To access this data use the Loop Dataset Action to loop through the records, inside the loop you can extract the data from the field of your choice (from the current record) by using an embedded expression such as the one that follows:

%datasetname.firstname%

or you could combine two fields together like this:

%datasetname.firstname + " " + datasetname.lastname%

Embedded Expressions such as these can be used in any parameter in any action. So, to display the data in a message box the AML code would look like this:

At runtime the text %datasetname.firstname% is replaced by the contents of the subject of the current record.

This action creates a dataset with the following fields (assuming the name of the dataset is theDataset):

Name	Data Type	Return Value
theDataset.Title	Text	Returns the window title.
theDataset.Handle	Number	Returns the window handle.
theDataset.Class	Text	Returns the window class.

There are standard fields included in every dataset. The table below describes these fields (assuming the name of the dataset is theDataset):

Name	Data Type	Return Value
theDataset.CurrentRow	Number	The current row that will be accessed in the dataset by an expression that does not contain a specific row index.
theDataset.TotalRows	Number	The total number of rows in the dataset
theDataset.TotalColumns	Number	The total number of columns (not including the static columns) in the dataset.
theDataset.ExecutionDate	Date	The date and time the dataset was created and populated
theDataset.RowsAffected	Number	The number of rows affected by an update.
theDataset.SQLQuery	Text	The SQL Query that was used to generate this dataset (If a SQL Query was not used, this value is empty).
theDataset.Datasource	Text	The datasource used for the SQL Query, if applicable.
theDataset.ColumnNames	Text	A comma-delimited list of the column names in the dataset

Variables and Expressions

All text fields allow the use of expressions, which can be entered by surrounding the expression in percentage signs (Example: %myVariable% or % Left('Text',2)%). To help construct these expressions, you can open Expression Builder from these fields by clicking the percent sign (%) or pressing F2.