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How to Solve ElementNotVisibleException in Selenium Webdriver

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Hello, Guys, Welcome back to Selenium tutorial, today we will see how to handle element not visible  exception in Webdriver.

I faced this exception number of times, I struggled a lot while searching solution, and finally, I got so many solutions to solve this exception.

Before jumping to ElementNotVisibleException you should check below two posts that actually will help you to understand exception better.

How to handle Exception in Selenium

What are different exception is available in Selenium.

 

Full Exception document is available here- https://selenium.googlecode.com/git/docs/api/py/common/selenium.common.exceptions.html

 

Let us see what the reason behind this exception is:

Reasons for ElementNotVisibleException in Selenium Webdriver

Reason 1- Duplicated XPATH

While writing xpath for your application, you might have taken xpath that is matching with more than 1 element, in this case, Selenium will throw Element, not the visible exception.

If you are new to Selenium and facing issues while writing XPath then please check below post which will help you to write xpath from basic to advance level.

How to write Dynamic Xpath in Selenium Webdriver

Reason 2-

If you are trying to access some particular element on Webpage that is not currently visible, in this case also you will get the Element, not visible exception.

 

 

ElementNotVisible Exception in Selenium
ElementNotVisible Exception in Selenium

Solutions for ElementNotVisibleException in Selenium Webdriver

First Solution: Try to write unique XPATH  that matches with a single element only.

 

Second Solution:

Use Explicit wait feature of Selenium and wait till the element is not visible. Once it is visible then you can perform your operations.

Syntax for Explicit wait

new WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.xpath("//span[text()='index.html']")));

 

Explanation- In above example, Selenium will wait 30 seconds until the element is not visible and once it is visible, Selenium will perform an action and will move on to the next step.

You can also give a try using JavaScript click that forcefully click on Element 

 

Third solution:

This actually works for me a number of times. I was struggling with the OK button in my application. Even I was writing unique xpath but still I was facing Element Not Visible exception.  I have tried below code that solved my issue.

int ok_size=driver.findElements(By.xpath("//button[text()='OK']")).size();

driver.findElements(By.xpath("//button[text()='OK']")).get(ok_size-1).click();

Explanation

First, I have taken the size of the element then in next statement, I took the first element from the list and I clicked on OK Button.

I have seen so many scenarios where I solved my issue using above scenario.

I also faced lots of Hidden Web Elements in my web application and used below trick which helped me a lot.Check out below youtube video for the same.

 

Hope this post is worth for you and your friends as well, so if you find this as useful then do share this post with your friends using sharing buttons.

Comment below if you are facing any issue.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Bhargavi says

    Hi, Mukesh

    Thanks for the solution, I have tried all three, Still facing the issue.

    I have been trying to click an element in DOM, The Xpath is showing only 1 Result while Inspecting
    Still facing Element Not found Exception.
    Tried with Js Executor, WebDriverWait. I think the element is overlapped. That’s why its unable to locate the element.

    Please help me to find the ways to locate the element while automating to click it. Thanks

    Reply

  2. Tanushri says

    Hi Mukesh,

    Thanks alot as the third solution solved my problem. I was continuously getting elementNotInteractableException but using ur solve it works fine. 🙂

    Reply

  4. Tanu says

    Hi Mukesh,

    I am facing an issue while executing a scenario.
    1- There is calendar (Bootstrap is used). As soon as we click on calendar button its opens a calendar and also next and prev arrow to select any month’s date.

    Issue is this. Not able to create the Xpath for next and prev button as element is not visible.

    check this and help: https://demos.telerik.com/kendo-ui/datetimepicker/index

    Reply

    • Mukesh Otwani says

      Hi Tanu,

      First enable calendar control so that calendar should get enabled then use this xpath //a[@aria-label=’Next’] for next month. Similarly use //a[@aria-label=’Previous’] for previous month control.

      Reply

  5. Manikumar says

    Hi When we ran scripts to Intellij scripts were running properly but wehn we trigger with Jenkins we are getting no such element found exception can you please guide us?

    Reply

  9. preetam singh says

    Hi Mukesh
    i have one question
    suppose we have three element of same xpath
    then how will we use appropriate element

    Reply

  12. Nikhil says

    Hi Mukesh,

    In my case I had to apply filters to 3 different columns on a single page of my application. And each first element after filtering had same locator. 🙁

    I was literally trying this for 2 days and finally it worked using 3rd solution .

    Thank you so much worked like a gem even though at first glance it looked like pretty off-beat solution. Cheers!

    Reply

  13. sumit says

    Hi Thanks for the Third Solution. its work for me. i got stuck in this situation for long time. but now its resolve.
    Thanks

    Reply

  15. Amit Chaudhary says

    Hi Mukesh,

    Thanks for the valuable post.

    Third solution work for me number of times but today it is not working for me.

    What is the problem.

    Below is the code-
    WebElement we=driver.findElement(By.xpath(“.//*[@id=’TrackersMenue’]/a”));
    we.click();
    driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(6, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
    int menu=driver.findElements(By.xpath(“.//*[@id=’exerciseMenuId’]/a/span”)).size();
    driver.findElements(By.xpath(“.//*[@id=’exerciseMenuId’]/a/span”)).get(menu-1).click();

    Reply

  16. Hemanth Govindu says

    Hi Mukesh,
    I’ve some doubt regarding ElementNotVisibleException, While i’m automating bookmyshow.com, when ever I navigate to home page, it asks for the location to enter at the topmost right corner of the page. I used the unique xpath, still faced ElementNotVisibleException and I didn’t change anything and executed few hours after, it worked fine. Also used implicit wait. could you please clarify my confusion and reason behind the failure?

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply

  18. Anand says

    Third Solutions worked for me. Thank you so much. Was challenging to find your solutions on Google.

    Thanks a ton appreciated

    Thanks
    Anand

    Reply

  19. Priscilla says

    Hi ,
    Solution No:3 worked perfectly for me. I have tried other solution and banging my head for past 3 days. Got few expert help too but nothing worked out.
    Thanks for the Post

    Reply

  22. sergio pavez says

    Hey, while your solution works (second solution) I still have the same issue when trying to access another dropdown inside the one that I’m waiting. I tried to do the same thing again (new WebDriverWait) but it does not work.

    Here are the lines that I’m using:

    driver.findElement(By.xpath(“.//*[@id=’t3-mainnav’]/div/div/div/div/ul/li[3]”)).click();

    new WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.xpath(“.//*[@id=’t3-mainnav’]/div/div/div/div/ul/li[3]/div/div/div/div/div/ul/li[6]”))).click();

    new WebDriverWait(driver, 30).until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.xpath(“.//*[@id=’t3-mainnav’]/div/div/div/div/ul/li[3]/div/div/div/div/div/ul/li[6]/div/div/div/div/div/ul/li[2]”))).click();

    Reply

  23. Prasad says

    The workaround sounds good, will give a try, thank you for sharing.

    got a doubt the reason 1st reason (Reason 1- Duplicated xpath), if there are duplicate xpath, I believe, selenium will take action on the 1st xpath which will display in html, let me know if my understanding is wrong.

    Reply

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