HIDE WINDOW Command

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Hides an active user-defined window or Microsoft Visual FoxPro system window.

HIDE WINDOW WindowName1 [, WindowName2 ... ] | ALL | SCREEN
   [ IN [WINDOW] WindowNameN | IN [WINDOW] SCREEN | IN [WINDOW]
   [BOTTOM | TOP | SAME]

Parameters

  • WindowName1 [, WindowName2 ...]
    Specifies the name of the window or a list of windows (separated by commas) to hide. If you issue HIDE WINDOW without any arguments, the active window is hidden. In Visual FoxPro, you can specify the name of a toolbar to hide. See SHOW WINDOW for a list of Visual FoxPro toolbar names.
  • ALL
    Hides all windows.
  • SCREEN
    Hides the main Visual FoxPro window. To display the main Visual FoxPro window again, issue ACTIVATE WINDOW SCREEN or SHOW WINDOW SCREEN.
  • IN [WINDOW] WindowNameN
    Hides the window within a parent window.
  • IN [WINDOW] SCREEN
    Explicitly hides a window in the main Visual FoxPro window.
  • BOTTOM | TOP | SAME
    Specifies where windows are hidden with respect to other windows. BOTTOM places a window behind all other windows. TOP (the default) places a window in front of all other windows. SAME hides a window without affecting its front-to-back placement. To preserve the relative positions of multiple hidden windows when they are redisplayed with SHOW WINDOW ALL, include the SAME keyword when you hide the windows.

Remarks

HIDE WINDOW removes a window or a set of windows from the main Visual FoxPro window or from a user-defined window. You can use HIDE WINDOW to hide system windows, such as the Command window, the Data Session window, and so on.

Hiding a window isn't the same as closing it. When a window is hidden, it stays resident in memory and remains active. Output can be sent to a hidden window, but you cannot see it.

Releasing a window removes it from memory. Windows removed from memory must be defined again to be redisplayed. A window can be displayed with ACTIVATE WINDOW or SHOW WINDOW.

To hide a system window and or a toolbar (in Visual FoxPro), enclose the entire system window or toolbar name in quotation marks. For example, to hide the Report Controls toolbar in Visual FoxPro, issue the following command:

HIDE WINDOW "Report Controls"

Historically in prior versions of Visual FoxPro, the Data Session window has always been referred to as the View window. Additionally, language used to control this window, such as HIDE WINDOW, ACTIVATE WINDOW, WONTOP( ), also refers to this window as the View window. Visual FoxPro continues to refer to the View window for the HIDE WINDOW command.

Example

In the following example, a window named wOutput1 is defined and activated. The program waits for you to press a key and then hides the window. The program waits for you to press a key again and then displays the window. Pressing a key a third time removes the window from the screen and from memory.

DEFINE WINDOW wOutput1 FROM 6,1 TO 19,75 TITLE 'Output' ;
   CLOSE FLOAT GROW ZOOM
ACTIVATE WINDOW wOutput1 

WAIT WINDOW 'Press a key to hide this window'
HIDE WINDOW wOutput1 

WAIT WINDOW 'Press a key to see the window again'
SHOW WINDOW wOutput1 

WAIT WINDOW 'Press a key to remove the window from memory'
DEACTIVATE WINDOW wOutput1 
RELEASE WINDOW wOutput1

See Also

ACTIVATE WINDOW | DEACTIVATE WINDOW | DEFINE WINDOW | RELEASE WINDOW | SHOW WINDOW