Hi Bill,  With regards to your desire to use AppleScript to press buttons that Automator cannot write scripts for, have you attempted to use macOS's GUI Scripting festures? See the Apple Developer guide here:  https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/AutomatetheUserInterface.html  Hope this helps.  Take care, give care, kill all cops, -Maymay
the ones i'm having trouble with not menus. but the way i can list everything (more than menus) is by saying "UI elements." an example of ones that are giving me trouble are "static text." also, for this, the inspector shown on the page you linked is useful but not really because it usually gives the wrong name of stuff, where as the "UI elements" gives the exact name of stuff. but it unfortunately doesn't give all the actions that can be done with it. what's further ironic is that the Automator will record your action beautifully and say "click static text". but if you write that yourself exactly in the apple script the same way, it just says 'missing value.' this method works for most buttons/menus, etc, but for certain things, like when you 'click static text' that doesn't work