The VB AppActivate statement falls hopelessly short of being truly useful since the window title of an application can change without notice. A much more reliable means of activating another application is by using the window class name. It's much more reliable because the class name of a window will not change once the application has been installed. So, you ask, how do I get the class name of another application? You can find the window class name for any application by running a few lines of code. This is a one-time-only procedure. Private Declare Function FindWindow Lib "user32" Alias "FindWindowA" (ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal lpWindowName As String) As Long Private Declare Function GetClassName Lib "user32" Alias "GetClassNameA" (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal nMaxCount As Long) As Long Private Declare Function ShowWindow Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal nCmdShow As Long) As Long Const SW_SHOWNORMAL = 1 Const gcClassnameMSWord = "OpusApp" Const gcClassnameMSExcel = "XLMAIN" Const gcClassnameMSIExplorer = "IEFrame" Const gcClassnameMSVBasic = "wndclass_desked_gsk" Const gcClassnameNotePad = "Notepad" Const gcClassnameMyVBApp = "ThunderForm" Public Sub GetClassNameFromTitle() Dim sInput As String, hWnd As Long, lpClassName As String Dim nMaxCount As Long, lresult As Long nMaxCount = 256 lpClassName = Space(nMaxCount) sInput = InputBox("Enter the exact window title:" + Chr$(13) + Chr$(10) + "Note: must be an exact match") hWnd = FindWindow(vbNullString, sInput) If hWnd = 0 Then MsgBox "Couldn't find the window." Else lresult = GetClassName(hWnd, lpClassName, nMaxCount) MsgBox "Window: " + sInput + Chr$(13) + Chr$(10) + "Classname: " + Left$(lpClassName, lresult) End If End Sub Run GetClassNameFromTitle and, if you enter the window title correctly, the class name will be shown in a messagebox. Once you have the window class name, you can always get a window handle by using FindWindow with the class name and vbNullString. For example: hWnd = FindWindow("OpusApp", vbNullString) ...will find the hWnd for the Microsoft Word window. You can now activate the Word window with this function: Public Function fActivateWindowClass(psClassname As String) As Boolean Dim hwnd As Long hwnd = FindWindow(psClassname, vbNullString) If hwnd > 0 Then ShowWindow hwnd, SW_SHOWNORMAL fActivateWindowClass = True End If End Function