[Python] pywinauto (Win32) won’t find Edit until I manually click it—how to force a hidden...

I’m automating a legacy Win32 app with pywinauto’s Win32 backend. When I dump the control tree, I see that an Edit control named Edit62 exists in the panel, but any attempt to access it fails with ElementNotFoundError—until I manually click or TAB into its parent. Only after that interaction does panel.Edit62 become visible to pywinauto.

Here’s a minimal repro of my code:

from pywinauto import Application

# Connect to the running app
app = Application(backend="win32").connect(title_re="Domínio Folha.*")
main_win = app.window(title_re="Domínio Folha.*")

# Locate the “Cadastro de Empregados” panel
panel = main_win.child_window(
title="Cadastro de Empregados",
class_name="FNWND3190"
)

# Print identifiers at depth=3
panel.print_control_identifiers(depth=3)


Output snippet (only buttons appear at depth 3):

| pbdw190 - '' (L491, T266, R1449, B344)
| ['|<pbdw19035', 'pbdw19036']
| child_window(class_name="pbdw190")
| |
| | Edit - '' (L491, T266, R491, B266)
| | ['Edit62']
| | child_window(class_name="Edit")
| |
| | Edit - '' (L491, T266, R491, B266)
| | ['Edit63']
| | child_window(class_name="Edit")
| |
| | PBEDIT190 - '928' (L401, T249, R491, B267)
| | ['928', '928PBEDIT190', 'PBEDIT190139']
| | child_window(title="928", class_name="PBEDIT190")



Then I try:

# This raises ElementNotFoundError
panel.Edit62.wait('exists ready', timeout=5)


But if I manually click or press TAB so that the real UI gets focus on that region, then panel.Edit62 resolves successfully.

What I’ve tried:

panel.set_focus() and even Win32’s SetForegroundWindow

increasing timeouts

wrapper.invalidate_cache()

None of these make Edit62 appear until I physically click the panel.

I could resort to sending repeated TAB keys and filling fields as focus moves, but I’d prefer a more accurate approach: programmatically focusing the specific input control, instead of spamming TAB to reach it.

Question: How can I programmatically force the Edit62 control (and other dynamically loaded children) to become visible to pywinauto without a manual click or TAB? Is there a recommended API call or sequence of messages to send so the app loads that control in advance?

Thanks!

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