ControlFocus

Sets input focus to a given control on a window.

ControlFocus , Control, WinTitle, WinText, ExcludeTitle, ExcludeText

Parameters

Control

If blank or omitted, the target window's topmost control will be used. Otherwise, specify either ClassNN (the classname and instance number of the control) or the control's text, both of which can be determined via Window Spy. When using text, the matching behavior is determined by SetTitleMatchMode.

To operate upon a control's HWND (window handle), leave the Control parameter blank and specify ahk_id %ControlHwnd% for the WinTitle parameter (this also works on hidden controls even when DetectHiddenWindows is Off). The HWND of a control is typically retrieved via ControlGet Hwnd, MouseGetPos, or DllCall().

WinTitle, WinText, ExcludeTitle, ExcludeText

If each of these is blank or omitted, the Last Found Window will be used. Otherwise, specify for WinTitle a window title or other criteria to identify the target window and/or for WinText a substring from a single text element of the target window (as revealed by the included Window Spy utility).

ExcludeTitle and ExcludeText can be used to exclude one or more windows by their title or text. Their specification is similar to WinTitle and WinText, except that ExcludeTitle does not recognize any criteria other than the window title.

Window titles and text are case-sensitive. By default, hidden windows are not detected and hidden text elements are detected, unless changed with DetectHiddenWindows and DetectHiddenText. By default, a window title must start with the specified WinTitle or ExcludeTitle to be a match, unless changed with SetTitleMatchMode.

Error Handling

[v1.1.04+]: This command is able to throw an exception on failure. For more information, see Runtime Errors.

ErrorLevel is set to 1 if there was a problem or 0 otherwise.

Remarks

To be effective, the control's window generally must not be minimized or hidden.

To improve reliability, a delay is done automatically after every use of this command. That delay can be changed via SetControlDelay.

To discover the ClassNN or HWND of the control that the mouse is currently hovering over, use MouseGetPos.

When a control is focused in response to user input (such as pressing the Tab key), the dialog manager applies additional effects which are independent of the control having focus. These effects are not applied by ControlFocus, and therefore the following limitations apply:

The WM_NEXTDLGCTL message can be used to focus the control and apply these additional effects. For example:

WinExist("A") ; Set the Last Found Window to the active window
ControlGet, hWndControl, Hwnd,, Button1  ; Get HWND of first Button
SendMessage, 0x0028, hWndControl, True  ; 0x0028 is WM_NEXTDLGCTL

SetControlDelay, ControlGetFocus, Control, ControlGet, ControlMove, ControlGetPos, ControlClick, ControlGetText, ControlSetText, ControlSend

Examples

Sets the input focus to the OK button.

ControlFocus, OK, Some Window Title