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excelsendkeysvba

SendKeys doesn't always work

I am using .SendKeys() in Excel VBA to send key strokes to an external window that I am making active using shell .AppActive method. The problem is that SendKeys is simply not behaving consistently and is sometimes sending the keys and sometimes not. I think it has something to do with storing the keys in the buffer according to MSDN documentation.

How does one get around this?

Solution

  • I found that the solution to this problem was to just make the application pause for a short while. This seems to allow the buffer to clear (correct me if I'm wrong please).

    In order to make Excel VBA sleep, I exposed the windows API function Sleep by writing at the top of a module:

    Public Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)

    And then after every SendKeys command, I just used:

    Sleep 1

    And literally, 1 millisecond made all the difference and the keys were always sent correctly.