topic Re: Unable to Click Menu item in Product Forum

Unable to Click Menu item

Amanda_Miescke — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:30:57 GMT

I am having issues with getting the system to click on a menu item from a dropdown list. This process worked fine on Friday but failed on Monday. We have two different companies and they both have this same step, the other company works fine. Any ideas how to fix this?

Re: Unable to Click Menu item

david.l.morris — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:46:51 GMT

Hi Amanda,

That probably isn't enough information for us to suggest anything.

Here are some questions to get you started toward providing more info:

1 - Is this a desktop application? I am assuming so given how many AA elements there are.

2 - Are other AA elements working before it fails on that item in the same session?

3 - Is the element working from debug mode?

4 - Why are you using "Ancestor Count" as an attribute? This is fine and sometimes necessary to use, but this can easily break with even just a minor difference in the screen structure even if not visible to the eye.

5 - Have you re-spied the same element to see if it is has some difference?

6 - Have you ruled out speed of execution issues? You'd need to have a conditional or arbitrary wait right before trying to deal with the element.

7 - Is the element able to be found by a wait stage and it just doesn't work to select it? Or can the element not be found at all?

Re: Unable to Click Menu item

naveed_raza — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 12:46:40 GMT

adding to @david.l.morris , if its browser based and if any small update also received then AA fails alot

Re: Unable to Click Menu item

Denis__Dennehy — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 12:49:25 GMT

I'd suggest unticking ancestor count (this will make no difference but tick as few items as possible in case something changes).
I'd change the name of your element - it is not a button it is a drop down item/menu item. Again - this won't fix your problem.
Rather than having different elements for each menu item I would suggest having a single element for all of them and having the name as dynamic - set by the navigate or write stage and potentially passed into the action for the screen as an input parameter. Again - this will not fix your issue but make your action reusable if at all possible.
Some dropdown screen elements do not load their menu item sub-elements instantly, the more options the longer it can sometimes take to load. This might be causing your problem - and differences between environments running the same application my be caused by different performance in the different environments. To test this you could put a wait stage before the drop down to make sure it is fully loaded or at least that your menu option is loaded.

It is a couple of weeks since this question was raised so I'd be interested to hear from Amanda if this was solved and if so how.