Send Hotkey

UiPath.Core.Activities.SendHotkey

Sends keyboard shortcuts to a UI element.

Properties

Options

• KeyModifiers - Enables you to add a key modifier. The following options are available: Alt, Ctrl, Shift, Win.

  Note: KeyModifiers cannot be used with the SendWindowMessages option. No error is thrown when executing a workflow that contains an activity with this combination of options.
• SpecialKey - Indicates if you are using a special key in the keyboard shortcut. A list of all available special keys is provided in the Key drop-down list.
• SendWindowMessages - If this check box is selected, the hotkey is executed by sending a specific message to the target application. This input method is faster and works in the background. By default, this check box is not selected. If the check box is not selected, the default method performs the click by using the hardware driver. The default method is slower, it cannot work in the background, but is compatible with all desktop apps.
• DelayBetweenKeys - Delay time (in milliseconds) between two keystrokes. The default amount of time is 10 milliseconds. The maximum value is 1000 milliseconds.
• ClickBeforeTyping - When this check box is selected, the specified UI element is clicked before the text is written.
• EmptyField - When this check box is selected, all previously-existing content in the UI element is erased before writing your text.
• Activate - When this check box is selected, the specified UI element is brought to the foreground and activated before the text is written.

Input

• Key - The key or key combination that compose the hotkey that is sent. This field supports only strings and String variables.
  Note: Starting with v2018.3, the Key property accepts String variables as input, enabling you to create variables for the most frequently used hotkeys in you automation and simply using them as input for this property field, facilitating process creation.

Common

• DisplayName - The display name of the activity.
• DelayMS - Delay time (in milliseconds) after executing the activity. The default amount of time is 300 milliseconds.
• DelayBefore - Delay time (in milliseconds) before the activity begins performing any operations. The default amount of time is 200 milliseconds.

• ContinueOnError - Specifies if the automation should continue even when the activity throws an error. This field only supports Boolean values (True, False). The default value is False. As a result, if the field is blank and an error is thrown, the execution of the project stops. If the value is set to True, the execution of the project continues regardless of any error.

  Note: If this activity is included in Try Catch and the value of the ContinueOnError property is True, no error is caught when the project is executed.

Misc

• Private - If selected, the values of variables and arguments are no longer logged at Verbose level.
• Target.Selector - Text property used to find a particular UI element when the activity is executed. It is actually a XML fragment specifying attributes of the GUI element you are looking for and of some of its parents.
• Target.TimeoutMS - Specifies the amount of time (in milliseconds) to wait for the activity to run before the SelectorNotFoundException error is thrown. The default value is 30000 milliseconds (30 seconds).

• Target.WaitForReady - Before performing the actions, wait for the target to become ready. The following options are available:

  • None - Does not wait for anything except the target UI element to exist before executing the action. For example, you can use this option if you want to retrieve just text from a web page or click a particular button, without having to wait for all UI elements to load. Note that this may have unwanted consequences if the button relies on elements which are not yet loaded, such as scripts.

  • Interactive/Complete - Waits all of the UI elements in the target app to exist before actually executing the action.

    To assess if an application is in the Interactive or Complete state, the following tags are verified:

  • Desktop applications - A wm_null message is sent to check the existence of the <wnd>, <ctrl>, <java>, or <uia> tags. If they exist, the activity is executed.
  • Web applications:
  1. Internet Explorer - The <webctrl> tag is used to check if the Ready state of the HTML document is set to Complete. Additionally, the Busy state has to be set to "False".
  2. Others - The <webctrl> tag is used to check if the Ready state of the HTML document is Complete.
  • SAP applications - First the presence of the <wnd> tag verified, after which a SAP specific API is used to detect if the session is busy or not.
• Target.Element - Use the UiElement variable returned by another activity. This property cannot be used alongside the Selector property. This field supports only UiElement variables.
• Target.ClippingRegion - Defines the clipping rectangle, in pixels, relative to the UiElement, in the following directions: left, top, right, bottom. It supports both positive and negative numbers.

Example of using the Send Hotkey activity

Here you can see how the Send Hotkey activity is used in an example that incorporates multiple activities.