Question

I’m running a small tool (on Windows 7, 32 Bit) that I would like to see what document is open in another application I’ve tried this, which works for NotePad on Windows.

        var myProcess = Process.GetProcessesByName("NotePad");
        string title = myProcess[0].MainWindowTitle;
        MessageBox.Show(title); 

the output is:

       "New Text Document - Notepad"

Now, if I try another application it doesn’t always give me the correct title but I noticed that most microsoft applications seem to be fine – NotePad, WordPad, EXCEL etc. It’s this other software that is an issue. It has a long title but just returns a very simple name.

Here’s what I get from my application which has processName = “FooBar”
The actual running window has this up the top:

“FooBar Software Verson 1.2 – [Results]”

and my code gives:

“FooBar”

any ideas?

[EDIT} 2012-11-19
The very crux of this issue is that I was trying to get the name of the open file from the window. It now seems that the software I’m using doesn’t display it there. What I’ve discovered is that a program called “AutoIT3 Window Spy” can get the text I need as the text of the open file is on the window and not only in the title. I downloaded the source (it’s part of http://www.autohotkey.com/ which is open source. It seems to rely on many of the suggestions already made but I’m not able to figure it out just yet.) The source code that I”m looking at is c++ and is located here https://github.com/AutoHotkey/AutoHotkey

So I think the solution to my problem may lay elsewhere. This one may go unanswered.

Answer 1

The developer has stated the following:

“I think the failure may be due to a discontinued property Form.Caption in VB 6.0 that was replaced with a Form.Text in. NET”

Thank you all for your valuable suggestions along the way!