How to Click on a System Popup that is behind other windows (1 Viewer)

[sxschech]

I briefly saw a system popup and then my access "froze" as it is waiting for me to click on one of its buttons. I tried minimizing Access, and it won't respond. I tried pressing Alt+Tab and can see and let go of the keys on it, but it still won't become the active window and stays behind the Access Window.

I also tried:

• Hover the mouse over the task bar and can see it as per the screen shot and even if I click on it, still won't become the active window
• Alt+F4
• Task Manager and double clicked on it and nothing
• Clicked on End Task for that item and nothing

For now decided to do the last resort by ending the Access task altogether. Is that the only solution or is there another method to get to that system prompt in order to click on Switch To, Retry or Cancel?

 

[Isaac]

That system popup is something that will be no use to click on anyway. That "Switch to, Retry" set of options looks promising, but generally isn't--no matter what you click, Access is waiting for Outlook application instance to respond, and probably nothing will move forward until Outlook finishes what it's doing. (short of killing the app, of course).

 

[sxschech]

Based on your response, the best course of action is to End Task for Access in order to get rid of the system popup since doesn't seem to be possible to bring it to the foreground for clicking and that even if it was in the foreground, clicking would not help anyway, correct?

 

[Isaac]

I don't want to sound overly authoritative on the issue, because it's possible others' experiences have revealed different solutions.

But, yes: In my experience, almost every time I see that popup, it's when I'm using one Office app's VBA code to manipulate another Office app, and the latter app is bogged down for some reason.
Generally, I find that I've failed to account for some scenario in the "another" app.

Maybe, the other app is even trying to present a dialogue box to you. Maybe it can't, because the app has been opened as invisible.