VBA to Activate Internet Explorer Window

Question

I'm making a macro that opens Internet Explorer, navigates and logs into a website. Everything works fine, but I need to bring the IE Window up front, and activate it, so I can use SendKeys on it. I've found websites and videos with different approaches on a command called AppActivate and i've tried many of them, but even if I copy the entire code (which works for the author) it won't work for me, I always get an error: Invalid Procedure Call or Argument - Error 5

A list of everything I've found and tried:

Dim objIE As InternetExplorerMedium
Set objIE = New InternetExplorerMedium
objIE.navigate "http://google.com"
'makes it visible, but not active
objIE.Visible = True

'A list of ways I've tried:
objIE.AppActivate "Google - Internet Explorer"
AppActivate "Google - internet Explorer"
'the above supposedly looks for the title of the page
AppActivate objIE
AppActivate (objIE)
AppActivate "objIE"

observations: I'm running this inside Excel 2013 and I'm using Windows 7 with IE 11.

Answer 1

I always just make IE an untyped object, like so

Sub test()
Dim IE As Object

Set IE = Nothing
Set IE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
IE.Navigate "www.google.com"
IE.Visible = True

End Sub

The IE window has focus when this finishes running on my end.

Answer 2

Someone write similar things here:

Get existing IE via VBA

With a little modification: (SetForegroundWindow Lib "user32" ) So that after it search for the Existing IE, it will appear on the top of our screen

*PtrSafe / LongPtr is to be used in 64-bit system *You may delete it if you are using 32-bit

---

Call Library

Public Declare PtrSafe Function SetForegroundWindow Lib "user32" (ByVal HWND As LongPtr) As LongPtr

---

Main Sub

Sub Test1()

    Dim IE1 As Object
    Set IE1 = ThisIE
    
    IE1.navigate "http://stackoverflow.com"
    
    Do While IE1.readyState <> READYSTATE_COMPLETE
    Loop
    
    SetForegroundWindow (IE1.HWND)
End Sub

---

Function to be called

Function ThisIE() As Object

    For Each ThisIE In CreateObject("Shell.Application").Windows()
        If (Not ThisIE Is Nothing) And ThisIE.Name = "Internet Explorer" Then Exit For
    Next ThisIE
    
    If ThisIE Is Nothing Then Set ThisIE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
        ThisIE.Visible = True
        
End Function