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c#outlookvstooutlook-addinoffice-addins

How to bring outlook 2021 window to front

I am wanting to bring Outlook's main window to the front, from within a VSTO add-in. I tried the approaches described in the various answers to this question, and it just doesn't seem to work, at least for Outlook 2021.

I get the Outlook main window's handle (which I verified using spy++ and appears to be correct), using either

Process.GetProcessesByName("outlook").FirstOrDefault().MainWindowHandle

or

(Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveExplorer() as IOleWindow).GetWindow()

(both yield the same result).

Then I try to bring the window to the front (probably some redundant calls in there, I was just trying everything I could to get this to work):

ShowWindow(proc.MainWindowHandle, SW_SHOWNORMAL);
ShowWindow(proc.MainWindowHandle, SW_RESTORE);
SetForegroundWindow(proc.MainWindowHandle);
SwitchToThisWindow(proc.MainWindowHandle, true);

What am I doing wrong?

Solution

  • It turns out that the missing piece was simulating an ALT click (just the up part part is sufficient) before calling SetForegroundWindow(). No need to call SwitchToThisWindow().

    As a bonus, setting ActiveExplorer().CurrentFolder() = ... reliably scrolls up & down to the selected folder (which it wasn't doing when outlook was not in the foreground).