How to find a button on webpage

Question

I am trying to perform multiples actions on a webpage to help users set up their preferences. I am using Excel VBA as it is the only way in the company to automate tasks.

First, they have to login, an operation which I was able to perform. Then, I browse to the appropriate page.

The problem happens here: with Internet Explorer if I right-click the page and display source code, only a part of the page is shown. Also, depending on the area on which I perform this action, source code is different, it is not a single piece.
If I use the DOM Explorer, things are different. The full page code is displayed and I can point on the button I want to click.

Button code:

<a href="javascript:somewords('somelink',var1,var2,false)">Click here !</a>

My code:

Sub Connect_to_system()

    Set IE = New InternetExplorerMedium
    Dim IEDoc As HTMLDocument
    Dim htmlTagCol As IHTMLElementCollection
    Dim Generic As HTMLGenericElement
    
    With IE
        .Visible = True
        .navigate "http://example.com/login?username=johndoe&password=123"

        Do Until .readyState = 4
            DoEvents
        Loop
        
        .navigate "http://example.com/somepage.jsp?reference123"
        
        Do Until .readyState = 4
            DoEvents
        Loop
        
        Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:10"))
        
        Set tags = IE.document.getElementsByTagName("a")
        For Each tagx In tags
            If tagx.href = "javascript:somewords('somelink',var1,var2,false)" Then
                tagx.Click
            End If
        Next
    
    End With
End Sub

My code loops three times (so I understand that it detects tags) but none of them matches my condition. So it gets out of the loop and nothing happens.
I tried to see what the tags detected and it seems that only the top ribbon of the page is recognized / loaded.
Even with the InnerText function these methods didn't work.

Answer 1

With your minimally supplied html code, this will have to do.

You can use innerHTML to compare your string value on the elements with your tag name of a .

Sub ieBusy(ie As InternetExplorerMedium)

    Do While ie.Busy Or ie.readyState < 4
        DoEvents
    Loop

End Sub

Sub Connect_to_system()

    Dim ie As New InternetExplorerMedium, aElemColl As Object, aElem As Object

    With ie

        .Visible = True
        .navigate "http://example.com/login?username=johndoe&password=123"
        ieBusy ie
        .navigate "http://example.com/somepage.jsp?reference123"
        ieBusy ie
        Set aElemColl = .document.getElementsByTagName("a")

    End With

    For Each aElem In aElemColl

        If aElem.innerHTML Like "*javascript:somewords('somelink',var1,var2,false)*" Then
            aElem.Click
            Exit For
        End If

    Next

End Sub