Using an IE browser with Visual Basic

Question

Struggling to find a solution to this one. From Visual Basic (VBA in Excel more specifically) I'm able to call an Internet Explorer window by title using

AppActivate ("My Page Title - Windows Internet Explorer")

And it works great each time.

I can open a new window and send a url to it using..

Dim ie As Object
Set ie = New InternetExplorer
ie.Visible = True
ie.Navigate "http://websiteurl"

And that also works okay But it opens a new browser each time and I want it to always calls the same window.

So can i Set ie to equal the same page each time. So instead of

Set ie = New InternetExplorer

It does something like

Set ie = ACTIVE InternetExplorer

(though that doesn't seem to exist). Is there some way of setting ie to be the same as AppActivate ("My Page Title - Internet Explorer") ?

Thanks

Full Code here:

Sub Find_Recordings()
Dim MyAppID, ReturnValue

AppActivate ("My Page Title - Windows Internet Explorer")

SendKeys ("^a")
Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:01"))
SendKeys ("^c")
Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:01"))

AppActivate ("Microsoft Excel")
Sheets("DataSearcher").Select
Range("K1").Select
ActiveSheet.PasteSpecial Format:="Text", Link:=False, DisplayAsIcon: = False

Range("A1").Select

Dim ie As Object
Set ie = New InternetExplorer
ie.Visible = True     ie.Navigate "http://wwwmyurl"

Do Until ie.ReadyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE
Loop

ie.Document.getElementById("searchdata1").Value = Range("J1")
ie.Document.getElementById("library").Value = "RECORDINGS"
ie.Document.searchform.Submit



End Sub

Answer 1

You could try something like this, drawing heavily on reusing Internet Explorer COM Automation Object to identify an instance of IE with then specific web page active that you are looking for.

Change
strURL = "http://www.theage.com.au/"
to

"My Page Title - Windows Internet Explorer" as necessary

VBA

Sub Test()
Dim ShellApp As Object
Dim ShellWindows As Object
Dim IEObject  As Object
Dim strURL As String
strURL = "http://www.theage.com.au/"
Set ShellApp = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set ShellWindows = ShellApp.Windows()
Dim i
For i = 0 To ShellWindows.Count - 1
    If InStr(ShellWindows.Item(i).FullName, "iexplore.exe") <> 0 Then
        If ShellWindows.Item(i).LocationURL = strURL Then
            Set IEObject = ShellWindows.Item(i)
            MsgBox "IE instance with " & strURL & " found"
            Exit For
        End If
    End If
Next
End Sub