Populate text field on web text disappearing

[Pavel_NaNoi]

Hey there, I'm new around here so I'm not certain whether this has been brought up somewhere else on the forum but I just simply want to report a problem that I've run into recently regarding the Populate text field on web action where it would populate a log in field on a specific website e.g. the email but then as soon as the bot switches to the next field which is the password it deletes the previous text it wrote in the email field and fails to login.

Now do note that this only seems to happen on specific websites as this doesn't happen on other websites that I've used this action on, so far this has happened to me on the Sage accounting & payroll website, it might be due to the insane amount of layers it has in its html code on the login page but I'm not sure. Now, I've already made a work around using OCR, but I just want to report this and hear your thoughts on this to see if there's something that could be done to fix this as this issue may crop up later in other websites where my OCR trick may not work.

Thanks!

[DarrelKoh90]

I am facing this issue as well when inputting text on Microsoft forms.

[Anonymous]

Instead of using the Populate text field on web page action try this:

1. Set focus of the web ui field using Focus text field on web page action

2. Then use the Send keys action to type in the userId and password

[Pavel_NaNoi]

Apologies, I left out talking about that because while the method you describe works if you trigger PAD manually, it doesn't work in conjunction with Power Automate Flow for some unknown reason, which is a whole other topic. This automation works by an email trigger that runs PAD and once it gets to that point, the method you just described is ignored by the automation, it just doesn't type or send any hotkeys on this website in particular.

Still, your method is great alternative in other places, I should've just mentioned that, that method doesn't work in my original post, was scared of confusing people but in the end caused confusion anyway.

[Anonymous]

Pavel_NaNoi, I tested calling a PAD based on the solution I mentioned above using a manually triggered cloud flow. The first time it was called it did not add the credentials, but every call afterwards worked. Have you tried with a simple cloud flow?

[Pavel_NaNoi]

Interesting 🤔, I'll take a look and come back to you with my findings. 

[kostasc]

Hey @Pavel_NaNoi 

Could you please try turning on the "Unfocus text box after filling it" option in the actions settings and see if this solves your issue?

Another thing you can try doing is to use the "Populate text field in Window" action instead, for the web elements that give you trouble. This action should work in browsers as well. 

(it is important to add the ui element from this button)

To make it more robust (in case you have more than one browser tab open) go to UI Elements and edit the selector. In the name, change the operator to "Starts with" like so: 

Then edit the name to something more generic: 

Let me know if the above helped.

Thanks!

[Pavel_NaNoi]

Hmmm, None of those seemed to work, then again I can't even seem to get the "Populate text field in window" to work either, it just ignores any website UI Element, no idea how you got it to work on your end.

Selected the UI element, went for any elements on this page, it just ignores them like so:

[Pavel_NaNoi · Accepted solution]

Alright I did some testing and its weird, these seem to be my findings:

- Manually triggering the flow and staying on the flow webpage (i.e. chrome is focused) causes the flow to function as you'd expect

- Manually triggering the flow and going onto the desktop and clicking anywhere on it before it starts running (i.e. desktop is now in focus for a second) now causes the flow to fail as I've described before and as you've experienced it first hand.

I'm not sure why this happens as it should automatically focus the chrome window anyway... I tried doing it again with a focus window on that specific chrome instance and window title, hasn't worked either. Might be a bug at this point?

[Anonymous]

I have noticed the same... Would not advise clicking around the desktop while a desktop flow is running:)

[Pavel_NaNoi]

True that ^^

[brianng2]

that works miraculously! Thanks a lot.