ControlFocus

Sets input focus to a given control on a window.

ControlFocus Control , WinTitle, WinText, ExcludeTitle, ExcludeText

Parameters

Control

Type: String, Integer or Object

The control's ClassNN, text or HWND, or an object with a Hwnd property. For details, see The Control Parameter.

WinTitle, WinText, ExcludeTitle, ExcludeText

Type: String, Integer or Object

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 can contain WinTitle or ExcludeTitle anywhere inside it to be a match, unless changed with SetTitleMatchMode.

Error Handling

A TargetError is thrown if the window or control could not be found.

Remarks

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

To improve reliability, a delay is done automatically after each use of this function. That delay can be changed via SetControlDelay or by assigning a value to A_ControlDelay. For details, see SetControlDelay remarks.

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:

• Focusing a button does not automatically make it the default button, as would normally happen if a button is focused by user input. The default button can usually be activated by pressing Enter.
• If user input previously caused the default button to be temporarily changed, focusing a non-button control does not automatically restore the default highlight to the actual default button. Pressing Enter may then activate the default button even though it is not highlighted.
• Focusing an edit control does not automatically select its text. Instead, the insertion point (caret) is typically positioned wherever it was last time the control had focus.

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
hWndControl := ControlGetHwnd("Button1")  ; Get HWND of first Button
SendMessage 0x0028, hWndControl, True  ; 0x0028 is WM_NEXTDLGCTL

Related

SetControlDelay, ControlGetFocus, Control functions

Examples

ControlFocus "OK", "Some Window Title"