Howdy's,

I just want to double check.. (I might have missed an option somewhere).. But AbsoluteTelnet doesnt support DDE (dynamic data extract) right? (kind of like "data scraping").

In my current emulation program, you can highlight an area of the terminal, copy, and then 'right-click' and use 'Paste Special' into Excel 2003/2007, and choose 'Paste Link'...

Thanks!
Cya
Hugo

And what exactly does this allow you to do?

Brian

It allows us to pull data from our legacy order system (telnet connections into a unix box with sales application) into Excel, and create - for example - 'Quotes' .. for faxing/emailing to customers etc.

Thanks

So you have excel macros that grab data from portions of the screen?

Not macro's no.. the relevant excel cells have the following 'statement' in them:

=Emulwin|'10.1.1.1'!'ScreenRect(0,9,1,9,9)'

Where 'EmulWin' is the application, '10.1.1.1' is the name of the window in the program, and 'ScreenRect(w,x,y,z)' is the area of the terminal to 'capture' from ...

This dynamically updates as long as the spreadsheet is open and the 'EmulWin' program is open -- EmulWin is a program called 'Tun EMUL for 32-bit windows' ... we bought it back in the 90's 🙂

Thanks

AbsoluteTelnet/SSH *can* be used as an activeX control. I wonder if we can figure out some way to get Excel to talk to it.

Brian

Yeah - that would certainly be an option to look at... Do you have any pointers (examples with AbsoluteTelnet etc) to get me running? (i am unfamiliar with ActiveX but I tend to learn quick)..

Txs

First, you need to figure out how Excel invokes ActiveX controls. This part, I'm unsure about. Every application tends to have its own methods/capabilities in this regard.

Second, read up on the AbsoluteTelnet API. THis API is used both in the VBScript scripting language built into Absolute for automation (login, authentication, screen scraping, etc) and it is also the same API used by the ActiveX control. [url] http://www.celestialsoftware.net/terminal-features/absolutetelnet/ssh-vbscript-api.html [/url]

Third, there is an example program installed in the AbsoluteTelnet/SSH startup folder called 'AutomationTest' which is a C# program that uses AbsoluteTelnet/SSH as an ActiveX control. You can use it to test specific calls and to see what you get back.

Ok - thats great - thanks for the help!