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VBA Web Scraping - Identifying Disabled Dropdowns

In this post I will explain how to identify a disabled drop-down.

Think we need to gather data from drop downs of list of web pages. Assume list of urls are in column A of an Excel worksheet and we need to put the value of the drop-down to a column B.

First we need to find a disabled drop down and compare it's HTML code with HTML code of normal drop-down to find something unique part for disabled ones.

For an example here is a HTML code of a normal drop down.

<select start="1" min="1" step="1" ptext="Quantity: " name="tmp" class="drp qty">

And below is a HTML code of the disabled drop down.

<select start="1" min="1" step="1" ptext="Quantity: " disabled="disabled" name="tmp" class="drp qty">

So now we can see that disabled="disabled" is unique for HTML codes of disabled drop downs. Because of that we can use Instr function to distinguish disabled drop downs.

DisableCheckingString = objIE.document.getElementsByClassName("drp qty")(0).outerhtml

If InStr(1, DisableCheckingString, "disabled=""disabled", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
    WS.Range("B" & i).Value = "Drop-down disabled"
End If
   
So here is a full code of an example.

Dim WS As Worksheet

Dim QuantityString As String
Dim DisableCheckingString As String
Dim url As String

Set objIE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")

Set WS = ActiveSheet

objIE.Top = 0
objIE.Left = 0
objIE.Width = 800
objIE.Height = 600

objIE.Visible = True

'find last row
Lastrow = WS.Cells.Find("*", [A1], , , xlByRows, xlPrevious).Row

For i = 1 To Lastrow

    url = WS.Range("A" & i).Value
   
    If WS.Range("A" & i).Value <> "" Then

        objIE.Navigate (url)
       
        Do
        DoEvents
        Loop Until objIE.readystate = 4
       
        Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:03"))
       
        QuantityString = objIE.document.getElementsByClassName("drp qty")(0).innerText
       
        DisableCheckingString = objIE.document.getElementsByClassName("drp qty")(0).outerhtml
       
        WS.Range("B" & i).Value = QuantityString
               
        'Distinguish disabled ones
        If InStr(1, DisableCheckingString, "disabled=""disabled", vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
            WS.Range("B" & i).Value = "Out of Stock"
        End If
   
   
    End If

Next i

objIE.Quit

MsgBox "Completed!", vbInformation, ""

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