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Power Automate Takes Control of Mouse

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Posted on by CU11030122-0

This is my first flow created in Power Automate. I need it to interact with a webpage by sending clicks and keystrokes, very basic. The issue is that it “takes over” my mouse while running. Of course, being unable to use my computer totally obviates the purpose of sending these input automatically. I searched documentation and found nothing on this. Is there a setting that I accidentally altered? What’s happening?

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trice602 15,402 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Hi,

There's a very useful process that allows you to do exactly what you want to do and it is a called Power Automate for Desktop "Unattended Mode". This allows your desktop flow to run in a browser on a VM or hosted machine and essentially, you still can use your local computer. You can launch the unattended mode from a cloud flow.

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Michael E. Gernaey 53,335 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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HI @CU11030122-0

Just to add some specific information.

Power Automate Desktop works by emulating actual mouse movements and clicks and typing. For it to do that, for any program to do that, it must have control of the inputs etc and in most cases the programs themselves have to be in the Foreground and loaded.

Imagine it like this.

When an App is built, it is built with windows (thats what everything is, a window to interact with). Now you want to click on a Cell specifically in Excel on Sheet ABC.

You cannot simply do that, you have to actually have Excel loaded and in the foreground etc to do those things. Hence why it takes over your machine.

As @trice602 You can do it remotely on another machine via Unattended mode, but even then, it will log in as you, do the work, then log out. It still needs a Graphical UI Desktop + apps to do the work.

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