How to bring CMD.EXE window to top? (I would prefer a command or script without a need to compile anything).
The Wscript.Shell object accessible from Windows Script Host (either VBS or JS) has a method called "AppActivate" which, when passed a window title, will attempt to "activate" (which may bring it to the foreground if it's not minimised).
The following code snippet in VBScript worked on my machine:
Set WShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WShell.AppActivate "Command Prompt"
(Edited: Initially I hadn't tried it. Then I did)
With compiling:
Easy, just use Win32 API to FindWindow according to its title or class and then send it a message or bring it to the front.
Without compiling:
I'd suggest you'd find a command line utility that can do the equivalent of FindWindow and SetForgroundWindow, so you could call it from a batch file or any other script.
You can make an AutoHotkey Script:
^SPACE:: Winset, Alwaysontop, , Ahere
Return
Save it as a .ahk file. Run it after you've installed Autohotkey. Now click the window of your choice and hit CTRL+Space and the window should be always on top
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 basically would like to execute a (Cygwin-) Ruby program by clicking on some icon on my desktop. My first attempt went like this:
Create a desktop link
As a link target, have something like
c:\cygwin64\bin\ruby /path/to/my/ruby/program
This works, but it also opens a window where Ruby "runs in", which is not what I want to have.
If it were ActiveState Perl, I would have a command "wperl", which executes Perl without creating a Window, but such an feature doesn't seem to exist for Ruby, at least not for the Cygwin distribution.
I tried to change the link to
cmd /MIN /C c:\cygwin64\bin\ruby /path/to/my/ruby/program
hoping, that this would run the window minimized, but same effect as before, so I think I need to program somehow a wrapper script which suppresses the creation of this window. Does anybody know how this can be done, preferably using the Windows Batch language or some clever commands in the Cygwin tool chain?
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 am new to building apps using simple .vbs coding, whenever I build a .exe file using visual basic script command prompt opens along with the application at the background. so how to hide the command prompt from appearing??
and also how to set a background image in a pop up or input box?
To your first question, it depends on how you are calling the vbs. Windows allow to execute tasks with hidden windows. If you can not create a hidden window and you doesn't need the console, instead of using cscript as the executable for the vbs, use wscript.
Popup and input box from vbscript are standard elements of the system. AFAIK no way of change background of them.
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.