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Failed to select/activate the application opened with "Run Application" action

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Posted on by Serg24

Hello!

I face difficulties on selecting/activate the application opened with "Run Application" action. When I test it, the flow works fine, but when I launch it "live" (Power Automate Desktop editor is closed) often the flow fails to select just opened application.

Imagine that I have many applications opened at my Desktop, now when I run the Desktop Flow it properly opens the application that I need, but it's not becoming selected "by default" (I see its icon on the Taskbar, but to make it active I need to click on it).

Does anyone knows what action can I use in Power Automate Desktop to "activate" the application? I've tried searching for combinations of "activate/select" and ""window/program/application" in action search box but it didn't give me any useful result.

Thank you!

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Power Automate Desktop

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fraenK 2,125 on at

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Depending on what you are trying to achieve, there are several actions to get a window, focus or set its visibility: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/actions-reference/uiautomation

The window selector has to be unique.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @Serg24 ,

After launching the app. Use Focus Window action
For simplicity:
*While using Focus window action make sure your application is open.(Note: you can also do this without opening application)
* Select "Find window mode"
* I prefer By title and/or class
* Window title: click on the dropdown button towards right side. It will show titles of all the opened windows.
Note: You can also manually type the window title, if you want to

Hope this helps 🙂

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fraenK 2,125 on at

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You don't really need to focus/bring a window to the foreground for automation, it can stay in the background. Just the selector has to be unique.

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Serg24 29 on at

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Thank you, @Anonymous ! This is exactly what I was looking for!

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Serg24 29 on at

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Hello @fraenK, well, I'm not an expert, but I can assure you that it's failing when I use Power Automate Desktop flow as a part of another cloud flow (otherwise I wouldn't post this question 🙂 )
Maybe it depends on type of a license you use (in my case it's Attended RPA).

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fraenK 2,125 on at

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In your case it makes even less sense to put windows in the foreground, because you are running it in attended mode while you are present at the screen. If you would pick the right window and UI element selector, you can even run the automation "in the background" while you continue to work on other things.

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SreerajSJ 2 on at

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HI,
How do we click a UI element in background?
The window always pops up and take control of your mouse pointer for a brief time.
The options I know are 'Press button in a window' and 'Click UI element in a window'.
Both of them kind of emulates a mouse click on screen.

Is there a way to do this process in background and I can work on something else in foreground?

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