You can prevent opening this dialog at all.

I suppose, the dialog is asking you to convert the file using UNIX line terminators to DOS. You can open Advanced - Configuration - File Handling - DOS/Unix/Mac Handling and

• select the configuration option Never prompt to convert files to DOS format (not recommended by me except you are often editing very large files with UNIX line terminators), or
• select Automatically convert to DOS format and check additionally Save file as input format (Unix/Mac/DOS).

With first choice the file is edited always without conversion to DOS/Windows line terminators which must be taken into account on copying data via Windows clipboard to other applications and on running macros, scripts and finds/replaces including line terminators. With the second choice all UNIX files are temporarily converted to DOS for editing, but saved with UNIX line terminators.

Please tell us what the dialog shows if the displayed dialog is not about conversion to DOS. All dialogs displayed on opening a file can be prevented by making changes in configuration.

To change the behavior of the program in this situation (file opened via shell extension while UltraEdit main window being in background and a message prompt is shown) is not possible for us - the users of UltraEdit. This is a user-to-user forum!

Now, with knowing which dialog opens, I analyzed the behavior on Windows XP SP3 x86 with UE v20.00.0.1056 on using the shell extension DLL which means opening files via UltraEdit context menu item.

The UltraEdit window remains in background and Windows just lets the UltraEdit item in the Windows task bar flash under following conditions:

1. Setting Allow multiple instances is not enabled at Advanced - Configuration - Application Layout - Miscellaneous and
2. setting Files selected in Explorer will open in a new single instance is also not enabled at Advanced - Configuration - Application Layout - Miscellaneous.
   So files opened via the shell extension should be always opened in an already running instance of UltraEdit if there is one.
3. UltraEdit is already running and its main window is currently just in the background in normal window state or maximized, but not minimized.

So if the file(s) to open is (are) should be opened in a new instance of UltraEdit, the main application window of UltraEdit is displayed before the message prompt is displayed. And if the file(s) to open is (are) opened in already running instance of UltraEdit and the main window is currently minimized, the UltraEdit main window is also first restored in foreground before UltraEdit gets the focus and the message prompt is shown.

I don't know if you know that the window management of Windows controls usually which window is in the foreground. It is possible with some programming tricks to get the own application window from within the application to foreground, but that should not be done without a really good reason. Security applications for example use that mechanism to inform the user about a security risk. But applications should not steal input focus and set itself to foreground without a very good reason to do so.

You expect that the UltraEdit window should come always to foreground on opening a file via context menu. But the Microsoft designers thought different. Perhaps they thought that users may want to open multiple files via context menu in a sequence before the user moves the input focus to the application in which the files are opened. Or the Microsoft designers thought that the application window in which the files are opened is displayed on a different screen as the application from which the files are opened and therefore the user is just informed via a blinking task bar item that the application requests a user action, but does not put the input focus automatically to the other application. The designers of Windows wanted to give the control over the foreground window into the hand of the user and not to the running applications. And additionally it is very hard for an application to find out if the own application window is currently partly or completely not visible for the user.

You can nevertheless suggest with an email to IDM support to add extra code to UltraEdit to make sure that the UltraEdit main window becomes to foreground, get input focus and ignoring Windows default window management in this case before opening the file and showing the dialog. Read the 2 small paragraphs at top of the forum page. The term email us directly is a mailto link.