Autofill issues

The autofill feature is very helpful, but it may not work with all applications. Autofill is sending simulated keyboard input to another program, but depending on design of the target application, that may not always work. Some programs can’t process keyboard input so quickly, others are not designed for this kind of input etc. While the autofill feature works with majority of applications, there may issues with some or with certain web sites.

How to test if autofill generally works

To figure out if Password Agent autofill generally works you can try autofilling to Notepad:

1. In Password Agent select an item which has data in both User ID and Password fields. We send data from this item to Notepad as a test.
2. Open Notepad, it will show up with new empty document. Place cursor in edit area where you want the user ID and password typed (autofilled) by Password Agent to appear.
3. Still in Notepad, invoke autofill by pressing global hot key combination Ctrl+Shift+A (hold down Ctrl and Shift while pressing A). That will send content of User ID and Password fields of selected item in Password Agent to Notepad. If this info appeared in Notepad as you had typed it, autofill generally works.

How to select where to send autofill text

First, for autofill to work, you need to put input focus in destination application to a text field where you want autofill to enter data for you. That means you need to click the field with the mouse or press Tab on keyboard until caret starts blinking in the field. Only after that you can press global autofill hot key to initiate autofill. Otherwise Password Agent does not know where you want to put text sent by autofill.

Password is not sent (or appears in wrong place)

When sending User ID + Password by autofill, Password Agent expects that the web form you are sending input to is a simple form where you need to press Tab once to jump from User ID field to Password field. If specific form requires you to press Tab multiple times to jump from User ID to Password field, then you need to modify Autofill template of your Password Agent entry of this specific web site to include as many Tab presses as required, like $USERID{TAB 3}$PASSWORD, which sends 3 Tab key presses between sending User ID and Password. Form more info see “Autofill template and non-standard login forms” in the documentation.

Autofill apparently works but login (sometimes) fails

To use Password Agent autofill function you must disable your web browser’s internal AutoComplete for passwords, otherwise both your web browser and Password Agent may try to autofill your password at the same time, corrupting the password. See How to disable web browser’s autocomplete.

Autofill sends nothing to target application

Recent Windows versions contain a feature named User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI). Among other things this means that you can’t send user input into another application that runs with higher privileges than your application. Or in other words, if you run Password Agent as standard user (or are administrator under UAC, which still runs programs as standard user by default), then you can’t autofill to another application that has been started as administrator (that runs with administrator privileges). If you want to autofill to programs that run as administrator then you also need to start Password Agent as administrator.