excelvbaactivex

Are ActiveX Controls Disabled?

I have Excel worksheets that use ActiveX checkboxes to control certain activity.

Today they started to give errors. I was alerted to this by a colleague who was running a later version of Excel, but it was still working on my computer.
I noticed there were Windows updates, so I did the update. It now no longer works on my computer.

I cannot check the ActiveX checkboxes any longer.

I cannot add an ActiveX control to any worksheet, even a new worksheet.
I get an error dialog

Cannot insert object.

I can add form controls, just not ActiveX.

Solution

  • From other forums, I have learned that it is due to the MS Update and that a good fix is to simply delete the file MSForms.exd from any Temp subfolder in the user's profile. For instance:

    C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\Excel8.0\MSForms.exd

    C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\VBE\MSForms.exd

    C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\Word8.0\MSForms.exd

    Of course the application (Excel, Word...) must be closed in order to delete this file.