Clicking an online excel download button with VBA - excel

Question

My goal is to click the excel download button on this website. I keep getting 'Automation error. The interface is unknown' at my while loops.
Sub GetData()
Dim IE As InternetExplorerMedium
Dim HTMLDoc As HTMLDocument
Dim objElement As HTMLObjectElement
Set IE = New InternetExplorerMedium
With IE
.Visible = True
.Navigate "https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/mutual-funds"
Do While .readyState = 4: DoEvents: Loop
Do Until .readyState = 4: DoEvents: Loop
.document.getElementById("csvLink").Click
End With
Set IE = Nothing
End Sub

Answer 1

Here's a bunch of functions you can use to help clean up your code. https://stackoverflow.com/a/59721369/12685075
I wouldnt try and cram all that into a With clause.
I would be looking at splitting each step into it's own segment with functions.
Then checking for ready state and making sure the element exists first using error handling before you click it.
That being said, I'm going to say you can probably skip the IE explorer loading and get the link directly using XMLHTTP Requests. So open the page in chrome, turn on DevTools, Refresh the page, download the CSV, and start looking through the network requests.
You'll find one that represents the downloaded file, and it's likely a direct link you can then use with the parameters to let XMLHTTP skip the page stuff, and get the file everytime without worrying about the loading elements like CSS / formatting / fonts.

Answer 2

Some explanations why you run in trouble:
Don't use InternetExplorerMedium.
The problem here is that IE is opened twice. After the first opening, it is immediately closed again and the URL is loaded in another instance. But this instance is no longer assigned to the IE variable and cannot be referenced by the macro. You can observe this when you execute your macro. IE seems to twitch once.
The lines Do While .readyState = 4: DoEvents: Loop and Do Until .readyState = 4: DoEvents: Loop wait for the opposide.
The 4 says page is complete loaded. So you can use Do While .readyState <> 4: DoEvents: Loop or Do Until .readyState = 4: DoEvents: Loop. One of both loops is enough.
The page loads dynamic content after the IE reports complete.
For that reason you must break until that content is loaded. The simplest way to do this is a hard break. Look at that part in the code below.
You must trigger the download.
To do this, you need Sendkeys(). This is not a good thing, but can hardly be avoided here. I don't think there is a direct download link, as Peyter assumes, because I assume that the file for the download is only generated upon request based on the displayed data of the page. At least this is my experience with such downloads.
Please read the comments in the macro I wrote above the Sendkeys() line to find the downloaded file on your computer afterwards.
Here is the code that works:
Sub GetData()
Dim IE As Object
Set IE = CreateObject("internetexplorer.application")
IE.Visible = True
IE.Navigate "https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/mutual-funds"
Do Until IE.readyState = 4: DoEvents: Loop
'Manual break to load dynamic content after
'the IE reports the ready state 'complete' (4)
'The last three values are hours, minutes, seconds
Application.Wait (Now + TimeSerial(0, 0, 10))
'Now we can click the button
IE.document.getElementById("csvLink").Click
'Here you need sendkeys to trigger the save button
'Don't touch anything while the code runs
'Sendkeys will send the key combination in the brackets
'to the application which has the focus
'The file will be saved to your standard donload directory
'or to the download directory you placed in the IE settings
'if you did that
Application.SendKeys ("%{S}")
'Clean up
IE.Quit
Set IE = Nothing
End Sub