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VBA - scraping websites videos | Excel VBA Part 57.3 - Using Different Web Browsers in Selenium

Posted by Andrew Gould on 18 January 2021

Excel VBA Part 57.3 - Using Different Web Browsers in Selenium

This video shows you how to install the web drivers for the Microsoft Edge and Opera web browsers for use with Selenium in VBA. You'll learn how to copy the web drivers to your Selenium installation folder and how to switch between Chrome, Edge and Opera in your VBA code. You'll also find out why the Firefox browser is no longer supported.

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From:	Jonathan U
When:	21 Feb 23 at 22:57

Reply to Jonathan U

Hello Andrew G,
I am not new to SeleniumBasic for excel. I have found that other languages for which Selenium is available have the ability to attach to an already open instance of a web browser. I need to be able to do this because there is a policy that prevents my excel from "creating child processes". I am able to launch the Microsoft Edge driver, for example, from my command prompt and I specify the "remote debugging port" (number) in my command line. I should be able to use "Selenium.EdgeDriver.SetCapability" to set the "debuggerAddress" to be what I specified as the debugging port number in the launch, but this does not work.

Please tell me there is a way to connect to a browser that I have already launched.

Thank you,
Jonathan U

From:	Andrew G
When:	22 Feb 23 at 08:03

Reply to Andrew G

Hi Jonathan!

Sadly, I'm almost certain that this isn't possible with SeleniumBasic and VBA. It's a common question but I've never encountered an answer that works.

From:	namita
When:	08 Jul 22 at 18:47

Reply to namita

Hi Andrew, hope you are doing well. I am indebted to your help whenever I get stuck in automation in the past.

This is to ask your help about recent issues in my selenium automation with VBA on both Chrome and Edge browsers.

Now the errors say "unknown error: unexpected command response" on Chrome browser and "unknown error: cannot determine loading status" on Edge browser.

This error has come up after both Chrome and Edge browsers upgraded automatically, hence bringing compatibility issues with their respective drivers. I even tried upgrading both chromeDriver and EdgeDriver manually with closest matching edge and Chrome browser release numbers.

Can you please rescue me from this issue.

FYI, I made no change in running code before or after browsers upgradation.

Many thanks in advance,

Namita

From:	Andrew G
When:	09 Jul 22 at 08:50

Reply to Andrew G

Hi!

Apparently this is a known bug with a version 103 of ChromeDriver. The suggestion is to either roll back to 102 or upgrade to 104. I hope it helps!

From:	J.A. Clark
When:	20 Jan 22 at 21:56

Reply to J.A. Clark

Is there a Wise Owl tutorial describing how to use Excel VBA and Selenium driver to scrape data from a website that has the 'next' and 'previous' links to go through all results of a search and then add each page to a sheet (Example: https://dcca.secure.force.com/ActiveConsultantContractor)?

Thank you for all your efforts :-)

From:	Andrew G
When:	21 Jan 22 at 08:50

Reply to Andrew G

Hi! We don't have anything specific to that page but at a glance it doesn't appear to complicated - the page is well structured and both the table and the Next button have ID attributes. The Class attribute of the Next button changes when you're on the last page. The basic approach would be:

Go to start page

Begin looping

Get a reference to the table

Write the table to an Excel sheet

Get a reference to the Next button

If the Class of the button indicates that you're on the last page, exit the loop, otherwise Click the button

Repeat the loop

I hope that points you in the right direction!

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