Can selectors be selected conditionally?

[alee001]

I want to use different selectors to execute the process under different conditions, is it possible?

[Agnius]

No, they cannot. If your element has several selectors, they will be attempted in the order in which they are added.

If you want to conditionally use different selectors, you need to capture them as separate elements and then use separate actions under the conditions.

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[alee001]

It is too inconvenient to create multiple UI elements for different selectors, thank you for your answer.

[Agnius]

Well, there is no other way to do it. So, you either do the inconvenient thing, or not do it at all.

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @alee001 

Could you try like this ?

Since you have 3 different selectors for different situations, 

Is there is dynamic element involved , which you add it as variable based on condition, like some attribute value ?

Or 

Since you have defined 3 selectors like below 

each selectors will work when its previous version didn't work, so for all condition, use the same UI Element, so it will try selectors accordingly based on which selector is available now 

Try and let me know 

[alee001]

Does the ordering of the selectors matter, meaning the default executes the top one, if false the second...and so on?

[Agnius]

Yes, the ordering does matter. The top one is executed first. If you have several, it will take a while before the last one is accessed. Using this instead of different elements for your conditions will significantly slow your flow down.

[alee001]

I also thought that if it can be executed sequentially, the debugging will also make the process very slow. I will try again...Thanks

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @alee001 

does selectors differ from each other via by any attribute ?

[Agnius]

An alternative would be to set the entire selector as a variable and then set the variable in a condition before using the UI action.

This would mean there is only one selector, which is much faster. But you would need a condition action and a Set variable action to set the selector value.

[alee001]

The main thing is to switch between opened Excel files and different worksheet in a loop.

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @alee001 

I see

If you are trying to interact with excel files, why don't you try that with excel actions in power automate desktop ?

[alee001]

Because there are dozens of VBA files, using scripts is much faster than PAD to open, and I don’t want PAD to bind the opened files to the process.

[Nived_Nambiar]

Ok @alee001 

Since you are switching b/w excel files and excels sheets, would there be any attribute which has the window name or sheet name as value which you can use for switching ?