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Form Controls disabled (Text Box, ComboList and Combodropdown)

lohithsriram

Active Member
Hi Folks,


I was playing around the form controls in Excel 2010 and noticed that only Textbox, ComboList and ComboDropdown controls are greyed out by default when I launch Excel. I am able to use the other form controls but only these 3 are disabled. I am with Office Professinal Plus 2010 with version 14.0.6129.5000 (32-bit). Is it a known issue or any specific setting I need to change on Excel to make it appear? or any Office Hotfix installation is required for this. I googled and found this link which talks about resolving it, but no luck even after doing the setting what it is mentioned in there. Your experienced ideas please. Thank you.


http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/excel-help/why-are-form-related-commands-or-controls-on-the-ribbon-disabled-HA010238219.aspx
 
Hi ,


I am not able to understand your problem ; the link you have posted specifically says that the TextBox , ListBox and ComboBox Forms controls are not available in Excel.


There is information related to resolving the problem if it pertains to ActiveX controls ; is your problem one related to Form controls or ActiveX controls ?


Narayan
 
Hi Narayan,


Its the Form controls. Start Excel and go into the Developer tab, under Controls group, click on Insert. I can see two sections (Form Controls and ActiveX Controls). All the tools are enabled except last three under the Form Controls (those are Textbox, ComboList and ComboDropdown ). These are the basic control required on Excel to be placed and I am surprised to see them disabled.
 
Hi ,


Your surprise is surprising , considering that the link you have posted has this to say :

The following controls are unavailable in Excel workbooks, and therefore always appear dimmed.
These controls are only used with Excel version 5.0 dialog sheets:

Text Field
Combo List - Edit
Combo Drop - Down Edit
Run Dialog
Narayan
 
Hi,


Thanks for highlighting the above. After reading the link again, I have few more questions for you :


1) Why do Excel 2010 lack the property to add these controls on worksheet? Any specific reason for it or do Excel force us to use only the Activex controls instead?


2) I never used Excel 5.0 dialog sheets. What is the main purpose of these dialog sheets? How do they differ from normal Excel sheet?


3) Excel 2010 do not offer to add the controls directly on to the worksheet, however if you add these controls on Excel 2003, save and open in Excel 2010, you can operate these controls and write code for it as well. Also, you can save the 2003 format(.xls) to 2010 (.xlsx, .xlsm) and it works perfectly fine.

So, what makes these controls to be disabled in Excel 2010 even if it supports the controls in the environment?


These comments might not come into the new forum getting launched this night, but have a copy of text and will post it in tomorrow, incase if this needs to be dragged for.


and Thank you for spending your quality time to make all of our work, time easy and comfortable.
 
There are some more items / oddities in Excel from the xlm days [I have not used them]. I think they are retained for more of backward compatibility reasons assuming there would be some applications that still use them.

I also had wondered loudly:
http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/showthread.php?31070

And this is some account of weird items:
http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/oddity/C39/

They are not disabled in Excel 2010. You can still use them if you use Excel 5.0 dialog. If you right click on any sheet tab and choose insert you would see many options. One of them is:MS Excel 5.0 dialog. It opens up a new form for design the form options become active. It is from old xlm days.
 
There are some more items / oddities in Excel from the xlm days [I have not used them]. I think they are retained for more of backward compatibility reasons assuming there would be some applications that still use them.

I also had wondered loudly:
http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/showthread.php?31070

And this is some account of weird items:
http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/oddity/C39/

They are not disabled in Excel 2010. You can still use them if you use Excel 5.0 dialog. If you right click on any sheet tab and choose insert you would see many options. One of them is:MS Excel 5.0 dialog. It opens up a new form for design the form options become active. It is from old xlm days.

You can copy the form from the Excel 5.0 dialog and paste it into a worksheet and it will keep all the attributes.
 
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