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Anyone can recommend a good macro recorder for windows please?

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JoTo:
Greetings to my private Think-Tank (a.k.a. Donationcoder Forum) :) ,

i need to find a macro recorder for windows OS for our QA dept which need to test new updates for our software. This implies going through the same steps in our application for every testcase again and again. Sometimes with the exact same data (e.g. if an error occured to see if the error is gone after bugfix), sometimes only the nearly exact procedure but with different values (other testcases).

Problem is, AutoIT or whatever is not an option, as these guys and gals have no programming knowledge at all. So the recorder should be one for dummies. Just something like "start recording -> do the things you need to do -> stop recording -> playback recording".

No need for eye candy or whistles and bells. But saving/reload a formerly saved macro would be nice. Also maybe the possibility to edit the recorded steps a bit (e.g. someone did a wrong keypress by accident or need to change an entered value - with this feature he dont have to start all over again with recording the macro).

I dont need any special functionality like using DLL calls or whatsoever. Keypresses, Mouseevents are a must, edititing an existing/formerly recorded macro would come handy and having a kind of giving specific windows the focus so that the keypresses would go to the correct one (can be simulated by mouseclicks of course too) would be nice. And, as i said earlier, as easy to use as possible.

OH! And it should be FREE of course. Not that we wont pay for a good solution (if there are real benefits we maybe purchase one too), but then you have to fiddle around with license transfer from one pc to another and keeping an eye that you wont go over the top of your license amount and whatnot. With a free product that would be much easier to handle.

My problem is not, that i cannot find any macro recorder. More the opposite is true. I find GAZILLIONS of those and dont have the time or mood to install everyone one after another to see if it fits our needs. Maybe we can constrain the search a bit when you helpful community share your experiences and knowledge about this topic with me and recommend some of the better ones.

Thank you in advance guys for every recommendation.

Greetings
JoTo

skwire:
Might give this a look:  http://www.macrocreator.com/

It's written in AHK by a really active AHK forum member.

TaoPhoenix:
I toyed with those kinds of progs several years ago. A couple thoughts:

- consider making several partial macros. So for example if your test case is something like "report/run/condition/add/status=open/ok/ok/" (the slashes indicate separate GUI screens being dealt with), the macro does all that, and then you just enter the project # and click "Create Report" or whatever.

If you try too hard to automate absolutely everything, it starts being counter productive because you burn more time fiddling with the scripts. Same theme, it's hard to insert a mouse movement into the middle of a macro. So instead if you run two shorter ones, you can do the misc stuff in the middle.

- Watch out for Popups. The times I used Macros years ago, they only work in one sequence. So if you record this long sequence but now your printer throws a low toner warning that grabs priority, all of the rest of the macro smashes into "thin air".

cranioscopical:
JoTo,
If you don't care for skwire's (good) suggestion, you might like Macro Express — I find it both useful and inexpensive.
Macro Express web site here.
 

rjbull:
Both Quick Macros and JitBit Macro Recorder are payware, but both can compile macros to freely-redistributable .EXEs.  That means you, or the license holder, would have to do the work of hacking out the macros, but there shouldn't be any copyright problems thereafter.  The features lists of both programs specifically mention software testing as a target use.  Quick Macros says upgrades are free; JitBit's license is one year of free upgrades.

@cranioscopical: Macro Express is a good program, but last time I looked it couldn't compile macros to .EXEs.  Do you know if that feature has been added now?

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