Accessing the drop down list within applications?

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
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#1

Newby here requesting help!

I have figured out how to open an application using something simple like:

tell application “Microsoft Word” to activate

How do you activate the drop down list like “file, edit, view, tools, etc”

Not necessarily in Word but any application. I don’t just want to open the applicaiton but tell it activate one of the sub commands in one of the drop down list in the bar at the top of the screen.

If it was Word it would be like: open word - then open the dropdown list “tools” - then open the item in the list called “scrapbook” or something like this.

Any suggestions?
Thanks!

Model: new MacBook
AppleScript: 2.1.1 (81)
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060911 Camino/1.0.3
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.4)

#2

Hi Doz

What you want to do is called GUI Scripting and i gotta say isn’t that straight forward, you could do a search for GUI Scripting across this forum.
But you’d be better trying to find out whether the action you want to script can be scripted through the normal route, have a look in the dictionary for the application you want to script.
If i could give you a little tip though. then that would be to post has much info about the application you are scripting, theres a lot of very clever people on here who will help you and they
need as much info as possible.

Good Luck!