I have a piece of code which opens a certain notepad file, goes to a
line of the file, reads the date which is on that line then brings up
a message box if the date is in the past, the only problem with this i
have is when its doing the check, the notepad is above excel, so if
the message box tries to display, notepad is in the way and all excel
does is flash. i need to somehow send the notepad to the background
behind excel but still be able to read from it. any help?
heres my code:

Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Shell "Notepad.exe " & OpenFile, vbNormalFocus

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
lRow = 1
If oFSO.FileExists(OpenFile) Then
Set GFF_File = oFSO.OpenTextFile(OpenFile)

strLine = GFF_File.ReadLine
strLine = GFF_File.ReadLine
strLine = GFF_File.ReadLine
strLine = GFF_File.ReadLine
strLine = GFF_File.ReadLine
strLine = GFF_File.ReadLine
strLine = GFF_File.ReadLine

DateCheck1st = Mid(strLine, 11, 8)
DateCheck2nd = Mid(DateCheck1st, 7, 2)
DateCheck3rd = Mid(DateCheck1st, 5, 2)
DateCheck4th = Mid(DateCheck1st, 1, 4)

DateCheck = DateCheck2nd & "/" & DateCheck3rd & "/" & DateCheck4th

If DateCheck Date Then
YesNoQuestion = "Date of .GFF file is " & DateCheck & " are you
sure you want to process this file?"
answer = MsgBox(YesNoQuestion, vbQuestion + vbYesNo)
End If
If answer = vbNo Then
Reset
Exit Sub
End If