did you try on your code put _screen.show() after you set excel.visible?
if ur using a toplevel form the do topleverform.show()

>I have a program that opens an Excel spreadsheet and reads some data from it. I know I can keep the instance of Excel invisible, but I would actually like to keep it visible. However, once I set Excel as visible, it gets focus. I can't figure out how to get back to VFP (apart from manually clicking on VFP on the task bar). Is there a way to programmatically force focus back to my VFP application?
>
>Joel