>Though not really related, but I do remember the first time I'd stumbled across similar "hidden dialog" issue. In some earlier versions of MS Word if you bring up certain dialogs such as spellcheck, you can click on main window and put the main window in front and inadvertently hide the dialog. Upon trying to exit Word, you're greeted with a seemingly ominous message -- "You cannot exit Word" (w/o any explanation of why).

The spellcheck dialog is something I'm not fighting anymore - used Craig Boyd's spellchecker, adapted it to my situation and am now in rehab, trying to forget Word :). From the reports I was getting from the field, at some places (W7, I'd say) the spellchecker dialog would just appear behind the app, and would take focus. The only ways out of it were to press ESC to close it, or to alt-tab until it's on top - the unintuitive approaches. Of course, the users took the intuitive approach and killed the app.

Office automation is getting worse and worse with each version of Office and Windows. As if we're being sent a message from Redmond.