Description Focuses (brings to the foreground/front) the specified Window on the system. The Focus a Window action is useful when AutoMate™ is working with two or more programs at once and it is necessary to bring a Window to the foreground so that AutoMate™ may send keystrokes to that application. If you do not need to send keystrokes or mouse clicks to a Window then this action may not be necessary.

Focus a Window dialog

Parameters

Window Title
Specifies the title (caption) of the Window you wish to focus. The title of a window is located on the top left of the title bar of that window. For example, if Notepad is launched without a document, its caption is "Notepad - Untitled" (without the quotes).

For convenience, a drop down list of currently open Windows is available to quickly and accurately select the desired Window title.

Don't display hidden windows in the Windows Title Bar List
When checked this option causes the Window list to only display "visible" windows. When unchecked all window's that are open on the system are displayed - even "system windows" that you normally can't see. Unchecking this option is useful is you wish to select the main window of a system tray based application.

Window title must match exactly
Specified whether the Windows title entered is a partial title match or must match exactly. When unchecked, AutoMate will search for window titles that contain that text. This option is useful if you are dealing with a window title that may change depending on the document that is open -- for example: Microsoft Internet Explorer also displays the currently open web page. If you didn't care what page was open but you still wanted to specify the Internet Explorer window you would uncheck this option and enter "Microsoft Internet Explorer". If a window was found on the system with that text contained in the title it would be successful regardless of what comes before or after that text.

Example

To bring a Window into Focus (to the forefront), perform the following steps

1. Select the Focus a Window action from the Step Builder.

2. Type the name of the window that you would like to focus into the text box.

Notes

Some window captions change depending on the content and actions of their application. In these cases it may be useful to use the "Window title must match exactly" option to only search for the text in the window title that remains constant (usually the program name excluding the document name).

Related Topics:

Focus a Window Containing Action

Maximize a Window Action

Minimize a Window Action

Restore a Window action

Close a Window Action

Hide a Window Action

Unhide a Window Action

Other Available Actions