[Ethereum] Use contract from outside contract folder in hardhat test

Removing the from argument (it's redundant since the owner is calling the sendTransaction(), removing .provider and adding the address (addr1.address) fixed it:

const params = { to: addr1.address, value: ethers.utils.parseUnits("1", "ether").toHexString()};
const txHash = await owner.sendTransaction(params);
console.log("transactionHash is " + txHash);  

Results in:

$ npx hardhat test



  HandleEther contract
    Deployment
transactionHash is  {
  hash: '0xbc9a920f404109c6c97a3acbe3f2470864a2a650a0034faf353e235290b40be4',
  type: 2,
  accessList: [],
  blockHash: '0xd95b35db38076c84bc26be176d9305a862e2851436509eeafc913b8853300ba5',
  blockNumber: 2,
  transactionIndex: 0,
  confirmations: 1,
  from: '0xf39Fd6e51aad88F6F4ce6aB8827279cffFb92266',
  gasPrice: BigNumber { _hex: '0x6944bd18', _isBigNumber: true },
  maxPriorityFeePerGas: BigNumber { _hex: '0x3b9aca00', _isBigNumber: true },
  maxFeePerGas: BigNumber { _hex: '0x96eeb030', _isBigNumber: true },
  gasLimit: BigNumber { _hex: '0x5209', _isBigNumber: true },
  to: '0x70997970C51812dc3A010C7d01b50e0d17dc79C8',
  value: BigNumber { _hex: '0x0de0b6b3a7640000', _isBigNumber: true },
  nonce: 1,
  data: '0x',
  r: '0x7b7bf73f8f68b55148d0333b50deaccbf066b5a4268dba03cd9a7dfe3a8ba811',
  s: '0x7f0a57ac7646890fc748c22599f28a2da318e580890ca24f1e2bf704ce19bfbe',
  v: 0,
  creates: null,
  chainId: 31337,
  wait: [Function (anonymous)]
}
      ✓ Should send ether to contract after deployment


  1 passing (441ms)

Use .only(). For example, your test file would look like this:

const { expect } = require("chai");

describe.only("contract tests", function () {
  it("does function one", async function () {
    expect(await someContract.someFunc()).to.equal(something);
  });
  it("does function two", async function () {
    expect(await someContract.someOtherFunction()).to.equal(somethingOtherThing);
  });
});

and then you can run npx hardhat test and it will only run that test set.

If you just want one it, instead of using .only() on describe, you can use it.only().

EDIT:

As of hardhat version 2.9, you can use --grep as described in the original question.