Is there a way to detect if user clicked a disabled button? - excel

Question

Hey, I have an UserForm into which an user inputs varius profile
fields.
Once it's filled in, there is verification - if anything goes astray,
the CommandButton, named save_button is disabled
What I want to achieve is: If user clicks on the button, whilst it is in the disabled state, to display a MsgBox saying he needs to correct the incorrectly filled in field
For Demonstration purposes, I'm not gonna paste here the validation procedures, so let's just pretend that the save_button.Enabled = False is set from the getgo. Produces the same result.
save_button.Enabled = False ' already ran before, pretend this executes it
Private Sub save_button_Click()
If save_button.Enabled = False Then
MsgBox "Clicked disabled button"
End If
End Sub
Issue is, once a CommandButton is set to .Enabled = False then it can no longer be officially clicked (hence it can't even trigger the Click() procedure)
My next thought was to use the MouseUp as a substitute. Issue is,
this triggers on any miniscule movement over the button and I don't want to bombard the user with MsgBoxes
Can you think of any alternatives, as to how to detect if user clicked the disabled button?

Answer 1

When a control is disabled, the click event bubbles up the tree. In your case, I guess the user form will get the click instead. If you put your save button inside a frame, that will get the click if the button is disabled. It is fairly easy to make the frame invisible, by setting
Caption to ""
BorderStyle to fmBorderStyleNone
SpecialEffect to fmSpecialEffectFlat
And then size the frame so that is the same size as the button.
The code is easy:
Private Sub YourNewFrame_Click()
MsgBox "Save button disabled!"
End Sub
Tip: If you draw the frame, cut your button and paste it inside your new frame, it will be placed properly. Properly, as in in the right part of the hierarchy. Visually, you will have to do manually.

Answer 2

I want to offer another approach based on my comment to your question.
In the below gif, you will see that the 'Create Form' does not become enabled until all the necessary information is provided. You don't see it in the gif so much, but each entry that requires validation also has it behind the scenes in code.
The essential code behind that action is this:
Sub checkFields()
Select Case True
Case Len(Me.formTitleLine1) = 0, Len(Me.formPrefix) = 0, Len(Me.formNumber) = 0, Len(Me.formProduct) = 0, Len(Me.formEditionMonth) = 0, Len(Me.formEditionYear) = 0
Me.createForm.Enabled = False
Case Else
Me.createForm.Enabled = True
End Select
End Sub
And it's called on the afterUpdate event of each relevant box:
Private Sub formEditionYear_AfterUpdate()
checkFields
End Sub
With one small change to the checkFields sub, you can only show the save button once everything has been filled in correctly. That change would be:
Me.createForm.Visible
instead of
Me.createForm.Enabled