Can Macro Express hide an application as a macro runs?

We have two suggestions that may work to hide an application while running a macro. It is important to note that Macro Express can only send keystrokes, mouse movements and mouse clicks to applications that have ‘focus’ in Windows. This is an issue with Windows, not Macro Express. It is just how Windows works.

Windows allows up to one window to be designated as ‘On Top’. So the first solution would be to use the ‘Text Box Display’ command to display on top of the application. Be sure to set ‘Always on Top’ and to not set ‘Keep Focus’. Have the macro put the Text Box on the screen early in the macro and remove it later.

The second solution is to move the application to a part of the screen that does not exist. Normally the upper left corner of the screen is position 0,0. The location of the lower right corner depends on the resolution of your monitor but it might be something like 1024, 768. If you position your application’s window to something like -1000, -800 or 2048, 1400 it will not be visible on the screen but you can still write to it (see the Window Reposition command).

This second solution carries some risk, however. If the macro fails for some reason the application may be left in a non-displayable region without an obvious way for the user to drag it into the displayable area of their screen. To correct this you may want to write another macro to move the application to the displayable region of the user’s monitor.