YAM can be configured to show the preselection/transfer window for downloading new mails only if certain conditions are met, for example always, never or only if very large mails are to be downloaded. Since mails can be fetched in the background while you continue your work with YAM it would be very inconvenient if the preselection window would steal the focus from the currently active window (i.e. a write window to compose a new mail). Just imagine that you press "C" in that very moment the preselection window opens. This would immediately cancel the transfer, even if you were just going to type in the word "Commodore"...

To avoid such unwanted abortions YAM will open the preselection/transfer window in inactive state for automatically initiated mail transfers (i.e. timed mail fetch or mail transfers initiated by an ARexx script). For all user initiated transfers (import, export, get/send mail) the window will be activated, because this is an action that was explicitly triggered by the user and not some automechanism triggered by YAM itself.