powershell - cannot call a method on a null-valued expression

PowerShell Help
1

All,
I am trying to execute a powershell script in windows scheduler and getting the following error. “cannot call a method on a null-valued expression”. The script runs fine when I execute outside the scheduler. The script logs in to a web page with credentials and has to click on a navigation-tab to enter additional details. The script fails where it tries to “click” the navigation tab. I am using Powershell version 2.0 on windows 2008 R2 and the IE version is 11.0.9600.18524.

here is the html piece from the webpage

	<ul>
		<li>
			<a href="#voice">My Voice</a>	</li>
			<li>
			<a href="#Handling">Extension </a> </li>

Here is the code where it is failing in scheduler. (the code works well outside scheduler)

($IE.Document.getElementsByTagName(“a”) | where { $_.innerText -match “Extension” }).click()

I tried to search with href , but still it returns null value while executing through windows scheduler. But works well when executed outside scheduler.
($IE.Document.getElementsByTagName(“a”) | ?{$_.href -match “`#Handling”}

Any one has any suggestions to make it work in scheduler.

Thanks

2

It’s doubtful that if it works manually that your query is incorrect. Is the script running under different credentials, a different workstation\server, etc. that would cause issues? You can add some logging to the script to do some troubleshooting and determine where the failure is occuring:

if ($IE) {
    $document = $IE.Document
    $links = $document.getElementsByTagName("a")
    Add-Content -Path C:\Logs\my.log -Value ("Found {0} links" -f $links.Count)
    $myLink = $links | where { $_.innerText -match "Extension" }
    if ($myLink) {
        ($myLink).click()
    }
    else {
        Add-Content -Path C:\Logs\my.log -Value "No links found matching Extension"
    }
}
else {
    Add-Content -Path C:\Logs\my.log -Value "Internet Explorer object could not be instantiated"
}