Another annoyance

[royd]

Attempted ODBC access through Excel.  The Lacerte login popup was behind the Excel window which was not more than 50% of my screen.  All other windows were minimized.  Took me several minutes to figure this out.  How does Intuit get away with such bad user-interface in this day and age?

[Steffan]

I have worked around this annoying design by using a script to automatically pull the login windows to the foreground and make them always-on-top. I can share the code if it would help you...

[TGDonovan]

I feel your pain on this. The internally developed workpapers show 5 years of comparative history, but to pull that history it has to query 5 years of Lacerte information, and you have to log in for each year.

If you are logged into Lacerte, then the SDK should use that login to authorize SDK work in my opinion.

[royd]

Please do.  Thank you.  

[Steffan]

Here you go... copy and paste into Notepad and save as LacerteSignInAlwaysOnTop.ahk or whatever name you prefer. You'll need AutoHotkey to run it. Download link here: AutoHotkey

Here's a direct link if you prefer: https://file.io/78xLcWhiRfTK

Very useful scripting language, you can automate a lot with it. 😄

Let me know if you have any issues.

#Persistent

SetTimer, LacerteSignInAlwaysOnTop

LacerteSignInAlwaysOnTopHWNDs := {}
LacerteSignInAlwaysOnTop() {
  global LacerteSignInAlwaysOnTopHWNDs
  SetTitleMatchMode, RegEx
  WinGet, HWNDs, List, Sign In ahk_exe i)(w\d{2}tax\.exe|AccountServer\.exe)
  Loop %HWNDs% {
    HWND := HWNDs%A_Index%
    if (HWND and !LacerteSignInAlwaysOnTopHWNDs.HasKey(HWND)) {
      WinActivate, ahk_id %HWND%
      WinSet, AlwaysOnTop, On, ahk_id %HWND%
      LacerteSignInAlwaysOnTopHWNDs[HWND] := true
    }
  }
}

[royd]

Thanks!

[DatabaseRobert]

It depends entirely on the pop-up (which one you are seeing), and varies from program to program and even within programs.
  Some of them are "centered to the screen" (like Lacerte sign-in).
  Others are "centered to the PARENT PROGRAM" (so if Lacerte pops up a sub-window).

Personally, I would rather that all pop-ups were done as "to somewhere that the DESKTOP IS VISIBLE" by default.  i.e. "there is nothing else in front of NOR BEHIND the pop-up, so we can bloody well see it."



Robert

[DatabaseRobert]

@TGDonovan: note that you need to connect to EACH YEAR & MODULE combination with a separate ODBC link anyhow, so every time you want to look at 22ind vs 23ind, you need to login again.
  Also note, however, that they made the timeout on the ODBC SDK quite a bit longer than the regular program; I think it may well be 23:59:59 (essentially you get "one full day").

But if you leave your external consolidation program running, and go back to it three hours later to say "okay, show me ThatClientThere from 2019 to 2023", it should pop right up.



Robert Kirk
LTUGtools

[DatabaseRobert]

I looked at AutoHotKey because it seemed very powerful, but it also seemed like it was incredibly likely for me to monkey with some pre-existing key combos that I did not know about.  So I wound up not going with that, from a safety standpoint.



Robert