WinAppDriver: sendkeys fails with error An unknown error occurred in the remote end while processing the command

My testcode will launch microsoftword and tries to type inside. Here is the code I am using


    	String application="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Office\\root\\Office16\\WINWORD.EXE";
    	String appWorkingDir="c:\\tmp";
    	//To suppress the splash screen and want to use blank word doc. so we use flags /q and /w flags respectively
    	String appArguments = "/q /w";
...
....
....
WebElement element =  ((WindowsDriver) webDriver).findElement("name", "Page 1 content");
		if ( element != null ) {
					element.sendKeys(keysToSend);
               }

When I debug I notice that webelement is not NULL…But sendKeys is failing on it. I get exception “An unknown error occurred in the remote end while processing the command.” I am not sure how to proceed…

WinAppDriver log

POST /wd/hub/session/7D092E3B-44FD-4C0F-957C-4F99363BEF69/element/42.1115954.2.2/value HTTP/1.1
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 55
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Host: 10.173.75.51:4723
User-Agent: Apache-HttpClient/4.5.3 (Java/1.8.0_112)

{"id":"42.1115954.2.2","value":["This is sample text"]}
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Error
Content-Length: 133
Content-Type: application/json

{"status":13,"value":{"error":"unknown error","message":"An unknown error occurred in the remote end while processing the command."}}

It will be helpful for us if you print what exactly went wrong. Please help me to proceed further.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 6 years ago
Reactions: 2
Comments: 28 (14 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

What makes me crazy is it sometimes work fine. But Once fails, It continuously fails. if I wait few minutes or restart computer, it works( or sometimes not!).

didhddldlq on Dec 6, 2019

I can also verify this issue. It only occurs for us when running tests from a tfs build agent

I can create a test that executes perfectly on the machine. If I execute the same test on the same machine via a tfs build, it fails at sendkeys with an “unknown error” it appears to be able to click find other elements without issue. SendKeys() and clear() both appear to fail

ashton721 on Mar 5, 2018

@timotiusmargo can you pls help me here…can you pls post a code that opens winword on a remote machine and types helloworld? why it works for notepad and fails for MSWord?

shankarkc on Mar 2, 2018

@Jteve-Sobs You can find Windows Settings -> Time & Language -> Language -> Add a preferred language I don’t know setting to English is important or not. In my cases, when set to my local keyboard(It can toggle English and Korean using ALT key) I got the error. But English(United States) is working

retrogemHK on May 23, 2020

Thanks for the update @shankarkc!. I’m glad it worked out well. Note that you may still need to refer to “Page 1 Content” when you are trying to retrieve the text value. E.g.

// Send the text input
RemoteWebElement element = session.FindElementByName("Document1");
if (element != null)
{
    element.Click();
    element.SendKeys("Test");
}

// Get the text value
RemoteWebElement element1 = session.FindElementByName("Page 1 content");
if (element1 != null)
{
    var text = element1.Text;
}

timotiusmargo on Mar 6, 2018

@timotiusmargo thanks for the pointers. Its working now. I realized now that there are some UI elements that cannot take keyboard inputs and if we send keybord inputs it will fail. As per your suggestion when i used Document1 it works and I am able to type text inside word document.

shankarkc on Mar 6, 2018

@hassanuz / @timotiusmargo any updates on this? My team is kind of blocked bcz of this issue. We cannot run the tests in CI environment as we need to run WAD on a remote machine. Your fast response highly appreciated.

shankarkc on Feb 26, 2018