Forum Discussion

endamccrory's avatar
endamccrory
New Contributor
9 years ago
Solved

why do dropdown menus not save after restarting your computer?

After saving a few tests I return the next day to find everything works,
except the dropdown menus that cannot be located.
I spend the whole day backtracking and dont know what is happening.
Any suggestions welcome

  • No. It's not the menu selections that are the problem.

     

    It's TestComplete actually finding the objects (in your case dropdown menus) in order to use them.

     

    In order to use an object, it needs to identify it. In order to identify it, it uses properties of the object. Can be a single property, can be multiple. Can force reliance on child objects. Can apply a setting that says "find this object, using these properties, anywhere in the application object tree" which gives you flexibility, but at the cost of performance. (Last one is not a setting I'm a fan of personally) Identification properties will be captures automatically as you record or map objects, but this in no way guarantees the properties used will hold up in the long term. I've always found that manually configuring object maps takes more time initially, but they stay a lot more reliable in the long term.

     

    But, this is all automated testing 101 here. You say you're new to this? You mean TestComplete, or automation in general?

     

    It sounds like you may want to start reading here: https://support.smartbear.com/viewarticle/74488/

     

    And see how you get on.

7 Replies

  • TanyaYatskovska's avatar
    TanyaYatskovska
    SmartBear Alumni (Retired)

    Could you please clarify a bit?

    Do you mean that TestComplete did not record a test with your drop-down menu?

    • Colin_McCrae's avatar
      Colin_McCrae
      Community Hero

      Web? Desktop? Mobile?

       

      As Tanya says ... more info please! I use dropdowns in Web, .Net & Delphi desktop applications and they all work after shutdowns and restarts. Including some of the crazy Delphi ones .....

      • endamccrory's avatar
        endamccrory
        New Contributor

        sorry, im new to this!
        yeah its desktop software. we use virtual machines so I thought that could be the problem but since making precausions ive learnt it was not