Get data from EXTERNAL thirdy party Application

[device]

Hello,

This is my first post and since I'm new at VBA (I learned a lot through MrExcel forums, thank you all) I would like to know if there is any way to get information from external software window, for example, information on textboxs of other software applications (not Office)

I'm developing an VBA/Excel application using userforms and I need to extract some data on a thirdy party software from two or three textboxs and import them to my own textboxs in excel.


Is that possible via DDE, API or any other method ? how?

Thanks a million!

device

 

[Juan Pablo González]

Basically, depends. Some applications expose object models, you can connect to them using COM technology, like you would control Word from Excel for example.

Others use DDE, so you use that.

If they don't expose either one, then using APIs is an option, but really does depend on the application. Try researching the manufacturer of the original application to see if they have any documentation on that.

 

[device]

First of all thank you for your answer!

Well the software application is used on my work and I dont know who's the external developer and probably if i knew, it would likely to be hard to get such technical information.

I don't really know how to invoke DDE, COM nor API, how can I do it?

Regards,
device

 

[Juan Pablo González]

I think there's some DDE examples by searching for that in the VB help file.

For COM, do a search on "Early Binding"

For API... mhm, not sure where to lead you. Experimentation is the only resource I guess... try seeing if you can add, using Tools | References a DLL or EXE from the application, and if Excel accepts that, look in the Object Browser for any useful objects/methods/properties.

There really isn't a step by step method that I can give you, sorry.

 

[device]

I will try tomorrow if i can get via object browser (it would be so great if it works)

And yeah I will try to read some tutorials/mans... the problem is that I am not a programmer and this is my first contact with vb(a) and I feel myself putting to much effort on my objectives or at least creating high expactations too soon.

anyway thanks!