How to send keytype to notepad?

Question

Im playing around in C# and want my little console program to spell my name in a notepad window I have open. I've got the window handle (IntPtr) but don't really know what to do from here.

I could use SendKey but I want it to work whenever the notepad has focus or not, and as I understand it Senkey only work if you have the windowed focused :(

EDIT: I've tried the following (trying to simulate pressing B):

PostMessage(NotepadWindowHandle, 0x100, 0x42, 0);
Thread.Sleep(1000);
PostMessage(NotepadWindowHandle, 0x101, 0x42, 0);

Nothing happens :( And it does not break

You can also look into this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1922707/setting-external-application-focus Its VB but should help. — Nick Sinas, May 08 '12 at 16:54

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 08 '12 at 16:56

2

You are correct, SendKey only works for focused windows.

What you want to do is P/Invoke SendMessage and send WM_SETTEXT on the text box's handle (note that that's not the main window handle!). To get it you navigate down the window hierarchy until you reach it with GetWindow.

As a freebie, to get the text box's handle, simply call GetWindow with GW_CHILD on your main Notepad window handle and you'll get it, it's literally the first child.

edited May 08 '12 at 16:56

Roger Lipscombe

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answered May 08 '12 at 16:50

Blindy

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Although note that this doesn't *type* the text. It'll only work for windows that understand WM_SETTEXT. – Roger Lipscombe May 08 '12 at 16:56
Which the Notepad window does. – Blindy May 08 '12 at 16:57
...which the Notepad window does. Because it's an EDIT control. I believe that RichText windows will work, so WordPad's OK too. I'm just making the point that it's not *typing* the text, so it might not work with other text entry fields. – Roger Lipscombe May 08 '12 at 18:44

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:11

If you have Notepad’s window handle, why don’t you first activate it as the foreground window and then issue your SendKey?

This is the P/Invoke signature for setting a window as the foreground window:

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);

Edit: Former answer for a similar issue: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8953524/1149773

How to send keytype to notepad?

2 Answers2