I have a very basic VBS script that I plan on using frequently on my Windows 7 machine. Is there any way I can bind it to a keyboard shortcut so I don't have to navigate to it through Explorer obnoxiously.
I realize this question does not directly pertain to programming, or even scripting for that matter, but I could not find a straight answer online or through my own experimentation. I'm sure that there is a simple solution somewhere...
Thank you for taking the time to read, and hopefully respond to my inquiry.
Evin Ugur.
Windows does have built-in support for shell shortcut keys, where a keypress is used to invoke an *.lnk file that launches your VBScript (using either cscript or wscript).
Create a shortcut file, have it invoke your VBScript file directly or run cscript or wscript with the appropriate arguments, then save it and open its Properties sheet and set a keystroke in the "Shortcut key" field (I suggest something like Ctrl+Alt+K).
Like so:
Then, whenever you press Ctrl+Alt+K, regardless of the active application, your script will be invoked.
A more heavy-duty alternative is AutoHotKey: http://www.autohotkey.com/
Just as an FYI.
I tried this and I was not able to register the hotkey when I had the Icon in a costume folder. Even if I added the hotkey, it failed to work.
Once I moved the icon to the "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs", the hotkey started to work.
Related
I have a situation in which I wanted to utilize the camera app in Windows 10 from my Microsoft Access program. Normally I could just send a command to execute the program's executable, but with the metro app there is no straightforward executable.
The basic code I use is this:
Shell """" & PthToExe & """", vbNormalFocus
PthToExe is the path name for the executable.
I looked around a decent bit, but was unable to find any simple solutions and ended up coming up with my own. My solution is to make a shortcut link to the camera application and then to launch the link.
In order to make a shortcut link in Windows 10, you can click on the start button, go to "All Apps", find the app you want (in my case "Camera"), and then click and drag it to the desktop.
Now that you have a shortcut, you can launch the shortcut from a command line. (So my shortcut doesn't clutter up my desktop, I dragged it off my desktop and into a folder on the "C" drive.)
Type the path into a command prompt like this and hit enter to test launching your app: C:\GJ\Camera.lnk
So that solves the problem if you wanted to launch from a command line. For some reason, though, Access would not accept that command. The way I got around it was I put the command in a batch file (Edit: Alternatively, see HansUp's comment). To do that, you just need to open notepad, type in the same thing you typed in the command prompt, save the note pad document, and then rename the document to have a .bat extension.
You can then execute the .bat file from Microsoft Access as follows:
Shell "C:\GJ\OpenCamera.bat", vbMinimizedNoFocus
Note that normally, I use vbNormalFocus when running the shell command, but in this case, it is desirable not to see the little command prompt open before the actual program opens.
I need to write a huge VBscript to automatically run an application and I'm looking for a way to comfortably monitor what I'm actually doing, in other words, to display the values of some/all variables involved in my script.
I'm used to work with Matlab, where I have a comfortable workspace browser. When I run a Matlab script, all variables, their types and their values are accessible in that workspace and can be checked.
The VBscript I write with Notepad++ (it needs to be a free editor) and the only way I found to display variables was echoing them via wscript and cscript.
I set up the shortcuts.xml with the following line to run my script directly from Notepad++:
<Command name="Run with CScript" Ctrl="yes" Alt="no" Shift="yes" Key="116">cmd /K %windir%\system32\cscript.exe "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)"</Command>
In case I include commands in my script like
Wscript.Echo myVar
Wscript.Echo "Hello World!"
and run it with the newly introduced shortcut, a cmd window pops up and displays the value of myVar and "Hello World!".
But the next time I run the script a new window pops up. So my question is:
Is it possible get a continuously opened output window, displaying all echoed values everytime I run a script? I actually want to put the window on a second screen and keep the values from previous runs. So I can enter a line Wscript.Echo something, run, check, enter something else and so on, without fiddling around with a bunch of opened windows.
Alternatively, is there any open-source/free editor which offers an accessible workspace like the one in Matlab?
The open-source editor SciTE offers what I was looking for.
The default settings in vb.properties enable a similar behavior like in Notepad++
command.build.$(file.patterns.wscript)=cscript "$(FilePath)"
command.build.subsystem.$(file.patterns.wscript)=1
One can change it as follows to get the output into the integrated console.
command.go.$(file.patterns.wscript)=cscript.exe //nologo "$(FilePath)"
command.go.subsystem.$(file.patterns.wscript)=0
F5 runs the script and Shift+F5 cleans the output.
Another option is the NppExec Plugin for Notepad++ suggested by #Ansgar Wiechers, which adds a console. The script can be run with cscript.exe /nologo "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)" then.
Use a debugger. Start your script with the (meta)option //X. If you are lucky, you already have installed software (MS Office, Visual Studio (Express)) that provides a debugger for VBScript. If not do a bit of research to find an Express version suitable to your OS.
You can almost write native VBScript in the VBA editor, so if you have Excel or whatever you can use this to debug, then go through some steps to convert back to VBScript. That's what I usually do.
I downloaded AutoHotKey today and read the tutorial. What I want to do is have an F2 key do a shift-ctrl-S in one application. I cannot figure out how to do that by reading the tutorial. How can I do it?
Firstly, install autohotkey on your system.
Once installed, create a text file and save it as .ahk (rather than .txt).
Within the file, at the end, type the following code:
F2::Send +^s
Save the file then double click it to run the program.
This will change F2 to your shift-control-s in ALL applications.
To make it application-specific, when running, right click on the icon in the taskbar and choose "Windows Spy". Click into the application you want to use the F2 shortcut in and make a note of the line just below >>>>>>>>>>( Window Title & Class )<<<<<<<<<<<
Now, change your script to this:
#IfWinActive INSERTWindowsSpyWindowTitleHERE
F2::Send +^s
#IfWinActive
Obviously making sure to change INSERTWindowsSpyWindowTitleHERE to what you got from windows spy.
Save and run your script. Autohotkey will now only make F2 do that shortcut when the window (found via Windows spy) is active. (The last #IfWinActive is used to "reset" checking for that window in code below where this is typed - useful if you're going to type more autohotkey code in the future)
I need to create my own shortcut key, as in when we press Ctrl + Alt + Delete we get the task manager, likewise i need to click some other 2 keys to execute my program.
How should i do this ?
and also i need to know what language i need to program this?
I am using Windows Vista as my OS.
I think what he means is he wants to be able to create shortcut keys in his application.
If you're using Visual Studio, you can do this through the visual designer in menu options.
Anyways, I hope this article sheds some light onto the situation:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/839201
You tagged vb, and this article explains it in VB as well as C#.
Good luck.
I think you want to use a hotkey under AutoHotKey to run another program. Once you have an autohotkey script running, you can also add keys to perform actions within that program, set up other keys to launch other programs, etc. See entries under StackOverflow's 'autohotkey' tag and other help pages referred to from those links.
Create a shortcut that performs the Ctrl-Alt-Del action for you
(very useful in environments where OSK is not accessible). Create a shortcut to the following:
C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{2559a1f2-21d7-11d4-bdaf-00c04f60b9f0}
Double-click that shortcut to access the Ctrl-Alt-Del screen. Now you can forget about the inception through multiple RDP.
Is there a way to bring up the Windows XP shutdown dialog (the one with the three buttons – Suspend, Shutdown, Restart and Hibernate when Shift is pressed) using any language (preferred: C/C++, VB, Haskell, batches)?
I think I can load the msgina.dll in my C++ program, but I dunno what to do next – what function in the dll is used to show the dialog?
Assuming that your language has a way to do basic file I/O and invoke shortcuts on Windows, try this tip from here:
Create a new txt file somewhere on your system, open it and put in this one line:
(new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application")).ShutdownWindows();
Save and close the file. Change the extension to *.js.
You can make a shortcut to that file to make it easy to shut down your system.
I find PowerShell to be more elegant than other Windows scripting options.
(New-Object -Com Shell.Application).ShutdownWindows()