Extend coded UI tests and action recordings

Applies to: Visual Studio Visual Studio for Mac Visual Studio Code

The testing framework for coded UI tests and action recordings does not support every possible user interface. It might not support the specific UI that you want to test. For example, you cannot immediately create a coded UI test or an action recording for a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. However, you can create your own extension to the coded UI test framework that supports your specific UI by taking advantage of the extensibility of the coded UI test framework.

Note

Coded UI Test for automated UI-driven functional testing is deprecated. Visual Studio 2019 is the last version where Coded UI Test will be fully available. We recommend using Playwright for testing web apps and Appium with WinAppDriver for testing desktop and UWP apps. Consider Xamarin.UITest for testing iOS and Android apps using the NUnit test framework. To reduce the impact on users, some minimum support will still be available in Visual Studio 2022. In Visual Studio 2022, users can run existing CodedUI tests, but not record new tests because Coded UI Test Editor is not available.

Sample extension to test Microsoft Excel

This blog post contains a link to a sample extension for the coded UI test framework. You can also view the entire blog post series for coded UI test extensibility.

Note

The sample is intended for use with Microsoft Excel 2010. It may or may not work with other versions of Excel.

See also

• UITestPropertyProvider
• UITechnologyElement
• UITestActionFilter
• UITestExtensionPackage
• Use UI automation to test your code
• Best practices for coded UI tests
• Supported configurations and platforms for coded UI tests and action recordings