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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-13T21:59:46+00:00

I am trying to select a textbox and enter text in it through selenium

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I am trying to select a textbox and enter text in it through selenium web driver. The html is as follows:

</div><div>
    <input name="mLayout$ctl00$ctl00$6$16$ctl00$Database" type="text" value="Enter database name" maxlength="175" size="26" id="mLayout_ctl00_ctl00_6_16_ctl00_Database" accesskey="s" title="Go search this database" class="InputContent GhostText" onfocus="SearchBoxOnFocus(&#39;mLayout_ctl00_ctl00_6_16_ctl00_Database&#39;);" onkeypress="if(!__TextBoxOnKeyPress(&#39;mLayout$ctl00$ctl00$6$16$ctl00$GoButton&#39;,event.which)) { return false; }" />&nbsp;<input type="image" name="mLayout$ctl00$ctl00$6$16$ctl00$GoButton" id="mLayout_ctl00_ctl00_6_16_ctl00_GoButton" title="Go search database" src="http://images-statcont.westlaw.com/images/go_v602.gif" alt="Go search database" align="absmiddle" onclick="javascript:WebForm_DoPostBackWithOptions(new WebForm_PostBackOptions(&quot;mLayout$ctl00$ctl00$6$16$ctl00$GoButton&quot;, &quot;&quot;, true, &quot;&quot;, &quot;&quot;, false, false))" style="height:18px;width:21px;border-width:0px;" />
</div><div>

I’ve tried the following 

driver.find_element_by_id("mLayout_ctl00_ctl00_6_16_ctl00_Database")
driver.find_element_by_name("mLayout$ctl00$ctl00$6$16$ctl00$Database")
dbElement = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(lambda x : x.find_element_by_id("mLayout_ctl00_ctl00_6_16_ctl00_Database"))

Is there something special about the $ and _ characters is the fields? Why can’t selenium locate these elements?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Solution: make sure you are in the right window. In the step before this one, I had clicked on a link that opened a new window, and I had assumed that that window would automatically be the active one.

    To see which windows are available, run:

    driver.window_handles

    This returns a list. Note the window you want to change to, with index i. To then change the window, run:

    driver.switch_to_window(driver.window_handles[i])
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