Detecting events/retrieving data from existing commercial applications : <p>I am attempting to do an unofficial integration with some already existing commercial Windows software. The goal is to detect when a certain textbox and/or label is visible on the screen via our service running on the machine, and then grab the text from said box/label and do something with it in the service. There is no external API we can leverage here.</p>

<p>My research has led me to see about intercepting Windows messages, but I have read a lot of conflicting information about how to go about this (I have never tried this before).</p>

<p>Is there a good way to accomplish my goal? Third party tools are acceptable, but the license must allow distribution to client sites.</p>
