How Do I Autoatically Copy Website Address URL - vba

Question

I'm a journalist. I spend countless hours copying brief passages from various webpages, and then pasting those passages - along with attribution to the websites I found them - into web-based articles.
For example, many of my articles have passages which look like this:
The Mexican finance minister wrote:
The euro exchange rate is, strictly speaking, too low for the German economy's competitive position.
I want to use VBA to do the following:
(1) When I highlight the text I want to copy - in the example "The euro exchange rate is, strictly speaking, too low for the German economy's competitive position"
(2) I would also automatically copy the url where the text comes from (in this case, http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/06/german-finance-minister-agrees-euro-too-low-for-germany.html)
(3) So when I paste the text into my blog, it would automatically paste the text and ALSO the url. In other words, I would end up with what I wrote above.
I think the write script is IE.LocationURL to automatically determine the url I'm at. And I know how to launch Internet Explorer and navigate to a web page.
But I don't know how to put the script together.
Here's my attempt:
Const READYSTATE_COMPLETE = 4
' Declare Windows API function for setting active window
Declare Function SetForegroundWindow Lib "user32" _
Alias "SetForegroundWindow" (ByVal Hwnd As Long)As Long
' Declare Internet Explorer object
Dim IE As SHDocVw.InternetExplorer
Sub Main
' create instance of InternetExplorer
Set IE = New InternetExplorer
' using your newly created instance of Internet Explorer
With IE
SetForegroundWindow IE.HWND
.Visible = True
.Navigate2 "http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/06/german-finance-minister-agrees-euro-too-low-for-germany.html"
' Wait until page we are navigating to is loaded
Do While .Busy
Loop
Do
Loop Until .ReadyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE
On Error Resume Next
If Err Then
'Do Nothing
Else
'Copy the selected text
SendKeys "^c"
' Here's where I'm trying to copy the url
debug.print.IE.LocationURL
End With
End If
' Tidy Up
Set IE = Nothing
End Sub
I would then run another script to automatically log into my publishing platform and paste the copied text and url info. Ideally, it would be pasted in the format shown at the top of this post (with linked text and then indented quote).
But if I just have the copied text and url, that would still save me a lot of time.
I use Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking to run my VBA scripts.
But I'm lost. Please help steer me in the right direction! Thanks!
UPDATE: I guess what I really need is a way to store the url as a string. I can then later write the string (and just paste the selected text the old-fashioned way, with control-v.)
So does anyone know how to read and store the url as a string or value?

Answer 1

Playing around with a bunch of possibilities, I think I finally created a script which works.
To do it, I
(1) first have to copy the url manually from the web page by highlighting the url and the copying it to clipboard using control-c on my keyboard;
(2) select (i.e. manually highlight with my keyboard) the text within the article which I want to copy.
Here's the script:
Sub Main
Dim MyData As DataObject
Dim strClip As String
Set MyData = New DataObject
MyData.GetFromClipboard
strClip = MyData.GetText
Wait 5
SendKeys "^c"
'I have code here to open up the webpage where I'm inserting the information
SendKeys "^v"
' The line above pastes the text I have selected
SendKeys strClip
' The line above sends the url which I previously saved
End Sub
I don't know if it's the most efficient or elegant solution, but it works.