When it is running this ancient program that I have is able to tell when you press certain keys such as CTRL or SHIFT even when it is running in the background. And it is able to send commands such as DOWN ARROW or SHIFT CTRL END to the Windows program as if it were the keyboard. So when you have Windows or DOS program such as a Notepad text file running it can read information from the screen, print information to the screen, or switch between Windows.

I use it all the time with news report on the Web. When I see an important one I press a few keys and it automatically formats and stores a copy of the report to the appropriate computer disk directory.

Windows Scripting Host programs can do those types of things without too much trouble. And Perl and the other programs can do that as well. But it is difficult. And I am trying to learn what the steps are. That ancient program that I am using might run as slow as 1 operation per second. That is fine if you simply want to learn what is possible. But it is impractical for doing research.

Excel macros will easily copy data from one worksheet to another.