[kanzure]

Can you still use Office dlls without the Office GUI clicking away in front of you? Is this a limitation of using COM with Office?

[sanand0]

You can for Word and Excel. Just set Application.Visible = False.

However, I haven't found a way of turning this off for PowerPoint. On the other hand, one of the weird quirks is that the API draws much faster if you keep the window dragged. I've spent a fair bit of time keeping the PowerPoint window dragged while Python drives COM!