I have been using the above tool and Excel 2013 with mixed success. The good news is that it eventually works, the bad being that when it doesn't the following horrible things happen when modifications inside of the Editor are made:
modules with callback code revert to their state before the callbacks were added (ie, the code is lost!). This seems to happen even when there are no errors. This is frustrating!
custom tabs and context menus just don't show up if there is a conflict. For example specifying a callback to getLabel in xaml when there is also a label attribute specified. Of course this is my bad but it wouldn't hurt if the tool would catch this for me.
Question
Is the Editor the state of the art for customizing the ribbon and adding context menus. I realize the price is right but would gladly pay for a smoother and more reliable dev experience
The CustomUI editor doesn't affect modules in the workbook - but if you do make changes to the workbook while it's opened in the UI editor, then yes you may lose changes.
Also, you can set Excel to warn you of UI errors which will at least assist you in working out why your tabs/controls aren't appearing.
The problem Rory described (losing your changes) has bitten me many times, even when I am fully aware of why it happens (I may just forget I made changes externally).
Due to that and many other limitations I saw in the Custom UI Editor, I decided to create my own editor based on the original:
https://github.com/fernandreu/office-ribbonx-editor
For this particular issue, what I did was to implement a "reload on save" feature, which reloads the entire contents of an Office file (spreadsheets, VBA modules, etc.) right before the custom UI files are saved, hence preventing any accidental loss. I hope you might find this useful to prevent any future frustration!
Disclaimer: I am (obviously) the author of the tool above
Related
I'm having an issue with tool I developed in excel for one of our offices. It is a big enough file with couple of macros in it, but it works smooth day to day.
However every few days file will through error 'Can't find project or library' and file will crash. I know the standard guides are that when this error appears, it is to go to vba>tools>referneces and uncheck the missing library, however this is not the case in here. Simply when this happens file crashes and restarts and if it will happen once, every other attempt to open back the file will result in same error in crash. I mean file can be absolutely fine, you will save it, go back to it and error happens. So I always have to recover the file which absolutely destroys it, however I can at least recover from it information uploaded there by the users and copy it into the template.
So 2 questions I have is what is causing this to happen? Both myself and the other office are using the same version of excel so compatibility should not be an issue.
2 questions is is there anything that can be done to prevent this error from happening.
I have exactly this problem. As stated, once the error occurs, it it results in a permanent "unfixable" loop. I use powerquery and linked data and this appears to randomly "damage" the file as described - most frequently when excel crashes for some reason.
I have found either of the following to work:
- Open the file on a different computer that is not on the LAN. This
appears to be a key requirement.
- Open the file with "Excel Online"
In each case, simply open the file and save it with a new name. Move the new file back to the work PC and it will once more open perfectly.
On rare occasions (if powerquery is in use), it is necessary to "refresh all" data connections before saving the new file.
As a bonus, the new file is often smaller than the original.
This worked for me:
In VB go to Tools » References
1) Uncheck the library "Crystal Analysis Common Controls 1.0". Or any library.
Just leave these 5 references:
1) Visual Basic For Applications (This is the library that defines the VBA language.)
2) Microsoft Excel Object Library (This defines all of the elements of Excel.)
3) OLE Automation (This specifies the types for linking and embedding documents and for automation of other applications and the "plumbing" of the COM system that Excel uses to communicate with the outside world.)
4) Microsoft Office (This defines things that are common to all Office programs such as Command Bars and Command Bar controls.)
5) Microsoft Forms 2.0 This is required if you are using a User Form. This library defines things like the user form and the controls that you can place on a form.
Then Save.
I've had similar nasty issues.
First thing to do is use the CodeCleaner a free utility from AppsPro
This will export your modules and then re-import them, because internally they get a lot of binary "lint" which can cause problem.
Second thing to suggest is start breaking up your code base. So start removing modules to see which module is the offender. Horrible I know but how can you tell otherwise where the problem is.
Third suggestion is to always fully qualify your functions. So instead of Len(sMyString) write VBA.Len(sMyString) that helps prevent false negative compile errors.
Let me say at outset that I'm using old technology by today's standards! This happens in MFC on Visual Studio 2005 and running under WinXP. (If it 'aint broke.... ;-) )
I have a dialog based app which has a CTabCtrl with two tabs. Each contains a CListCtrl. These work perfectly under normal circumstances. They populate correctly and show and hide as they should. When I first open the application the display selection is correct. If I then minimize the dialog and restore, the CList Ctrl does not show, the tab is blank. It is the only control which has this problem. Another CListCtrl outside of the CTabCtrl does show up correctly. If I then swap tabs and back again, the other tab shows up then the first appears as normal.
This does not happen if I access any other part of the dialog before minimising, it is only when minimising is the absolute first action I take. It also happens with the CListCtrl I have in the other tab if I set this tab to be selected on startup in OnInitDialog where I set up the CTabCtrl.
I have actually solved the effect of this problem by adding into my OnSysCommand(...) the following:
if ((nID & 0xFFF0) == SC_RESTORE)
{
m_ctrlReadList.Invalidate();
}
but it bugs me that I'm adding code to solve a problem which only happens in such odd circumstances. I can't help thinking that there is something I have missed in the setup which is leading to this behaviour. Can anyone offer any explanation as to what is causing it in the first place?
My explanation is based on the facts of what I have found but this has been a learning experience for me so apologies if I get some of it a little confused, I'm still letting it settle in my mind.
Along with this problem I found another which turned out to be relevant. From the nature of the program I'm writing, my CListCtrls needed fixed width headers. Now that turned out to be another thing I couldn't set up! I just needed to prevent the user from grabbing and resizing the header's dividers or double clicking them to autosize, and of course there is functionality in the CListCtrl based on its child CHeaderCtrl to set this up isn't there? Well apparently not. LVS_EX_HEADERDRAGDROP for example isn't the way.
So I explored trying to capture messages which would allow me to myself, and what do you know, I couldn't! I could trap a few but not the ones I needed. I was looking for HDN_BEGINTRACK and HDN_DIVIDERDBLCLICK. (We won't go into the fact that you HAVE TO deal with both A and W versions of those separately!) The CHeaderCtrl is a child of the CListCtrl but it sends its messages back to the CDialog as the CListCtrl's parent. I tried there using both my list's and 0 as ID which headers apparently use. Many of them just plain didn't appear there at all.
So I created my own CListCtrl class inheriting from CListCtrl, overrode OnNotify and they turned up there. I simply prevented CListCtrl::On Notify from being called for those messages and it worked, no resize functionality at all.
I also played with the Z-order too which could have been relevant. I didn't explain earlier but this and another list are on two tabs, exactly aligned over each other. Selecting the tabs HIDEs and SHOWs each of the lists in turn. The other list had no display problems even when I changed the default display in OnInitDialog to show it at start up.
It was under the problematic one. So changing the Z-order in OnInitDialog where I set them up - did nothing! And to rub it in that second list was also unresizeable by default just as I wanted and I couldn't find out why. Their Properties listed exactly the same and there was nowhere in the code where any different aspect was set manually for either, they were effectively theoretically identical, but practically not so. So frustrating!!!
And the upshot of it is that now that the header resize issue is solved my display problem has vanished too! It looks to me and to a few others out there too who report similar symptoms as myself as though the CListCtrl is another one of the slightly flaky ones and needs a little massaging to get the best out of it.
I hope that makes sense to those of you out there who know this control well. I was surprised how simple the solution was, but it also surprised me that the diagnostic process was so difficult. It may of course come down to the ageing system I work within. Nowadays I do this only for fun and the expense of updating VS from 2005 for occasional use is not a high priority. I am sure that some of the symptoms will not show under other build and run environments but it may be worth having the issue and my solution on record somewhere for Google to find for others.
I'm using the Ribbon control located on CodePlex, and following the tutorial located here . Once I add the reference, and the proper code in the designer I get this error when I try to view the form:
Exception of type 'System.ComponentModel.Design.ExceptionCollection' was thrown
And I cant figure out what I'm doing wrong. Anyone worked with this control and know how to resolve this issue?
Interesting; I just ran into this same issue with one of my own forms; which is how I found your relevant and recent question.
Here's how I solved it:
Open two instances of Visual Studio. Open the same project in both.
In one instance, goto Debug->Exceptions and enable all the 'Thrown' options to stop at first chance exceptions. This will stop the debugger when the exception is generated.
In the same instance, select Debug->Attach to Process, select devenv.exe.
In the other instance, open the form to cause the exception
With any luck the first instance should stop somewhere that yields a more relevant exception.
In my case it turned out to be something that I should have conditioned with:
if (!DesignMode)
{
// Do something that should only happen at runtime
}
Don't forget turn turn off all those 'Thrown' options later.
A workaround for me was:
Right-click on the form and 'View Code'
Keep the code loaded in the editor and then attempt to view the designer again.
This feels very glitchy and I cannot confirm whether it's a problem with my code (as I'm working on an entirely new codebase) or whether it's a VS2012 bug. If I find out, I will report back.
Since the solution outlined by pilotcam didn't work for me, I took a different approach:
Make a SVN commit for the file.
Open the “*.designer.cs” file of the form that shows the error in source view.
Remove larger blocks of form element declarations.
Fix all compilation errors with ReSharper (i.e. ensure that nothing is red anymore on the side-indicator).
Save the file. No need to compile.
Open the Windows Forms Designer of the form.
If the error still shows up, do a SVN revert to go back to the initial state.
Repeat steps 2 to 7 until the error does not show up anymore.
Now you’ve encircled the erroneous child control that causes the error.
Repeat steps 2 to 7 with a smaller amount of controls you remove, until you have only one control left.
In my case it was a user control inside a group control inside a tab control, so I first identified the tab control, then the group control and then the user control.
You could isolate the user control inside a new form to further investigate. In my case it was rather easy; I put checks for design mode around most of the functions inside my control to ensure the code only gets executed if the control is not in design mode.
This fixed my error.
I had the same issue and none of the above answers solved the problem.
At the end, emptying the "bin" folder and rebuild has worked for me.
Let me add two more cases when such exception can happen, along with when control tries to do something that is not allowed under design mode:
When it's impossible to compile the user control.
When designer code contains multiple similar (or identical) lines with initialization of same controls or properties, this can easily happen on merge.
All that cases produce same extremely meaningful error message, and in this particular two debugging of Visual Studio won't help, so I just ended up with bisecting my designer code.
[ReadOnly(true)]
[Browsable(false)]
Above all properties worked for me
After much online research and getting close to what I am looking for by hacking it together (ie. modifying templates and other files, exactly what every expert out there appears to advise against in terms of SharePoint customization) I have decided to go ahead and post my issue here to see if anybody has ever had any experience with this.
In essence, I start off with a plain My Sites host. I would like to keep the My Profile and My Content pages, and add a bunch of new content of top on that. For us, simplicity is of utmost importance and so when I created a new Web Part Page and noticed that it added an additional ribbon under the navigation menu, I decided that it had to go. This is what it looks like out of the box:
With ribbon
Notice that at this point I have already made a few modifications, such as removing the My Site link that by default appears all the way to the left of the other options. This sadly was accomplished in a very brute-force way.
Now, here is the ribbon-free navigation bar, which is just what I want to be able to design without making system changes that I will regret in the future (and that may be easily overwritten by a CU or hotfix)
Without ribbon
So I guess I should make this clear, I don't want the navigation gone, just customized (ie. no My Site string to the left of my options, no Site Actions drop-down for read-only users) and the Browse/Page ribbon that gets added by default everytime you create a new page, well that one just needs to be gone completely, as shown in the second screenshot.
I have read all about hiding ribbons (which just hides the whole thing, including navigation), customizing ribbons (no success in accomplishing this type of basic navigation after trying them out) and simply don't know what to do anymore.
Maybe I am just taking the wrong approach by modifying something instead of just creating it from scratch, at the end of the day it is nothing but a static navigation bar common to all the pages with the special current user drop-down all the way to the right, then if a user has write permissions, she would also get the Site Actions drop-down under Home, that's it.
Hopefully an answer to this question will help others as well who are looking to simplify their SharePoint My Sites host a bit, as out of the box the number of web components that users are presented with might be just a little too overwhelming for your everyday employee, at least in the industry that we operate in.
Anyway, thank you kindly in advance, I look forward to your replies. Do let me know if there is something that is not entirely clear from my explanation :)
If you take away user's Create Personal Site permission (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262500.aspx) in your User Profile, the "My Site" link will go away.
Is there a way to convince the VBA editor in Excel to stop auto-formatting lines to remove the space at the end when I pause in my typing for a quarter second?
I had this exact problem and the following worked for me.
Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Excel Options
Click the Add-Ins category
In the Manage box, click COM Add-ins, and then click Go.
Look for an add in called 'Load Test Report AddIn' then uncheck it
restart excel
This addin is installed with VS2010 Beta2
In Excel 2010, toggling Design Mode button on the Developer Ribbon Tab solves the problem for me.
I've definitely had that issue before, where the vba editor would format as I was typing (not just when I went to another line). For me, it seemed to be related to a Microsoft Web Browser control that I had in an open workbook. When I took out the web browser, the VBA editor started acting normally again. I have no idea why that worked, but it did. Now I avoid using that control in my workbooks.
Something is causing your spreadsheet to recalculate while you are in the VBA Editor and this 'compiles' your code and thus strips the spaces. You need to stop the cells recalculating while you are editing. Turning the calculation to manual in the spreadsheet.
Tools > Options > Calculation should do the trick.
I noticed this when I had cells recalculating thanks to a DDE connection.
There is sort of a way to turn off the auto-"correction" in the VBA Editor.
Tools Menu -> Options -> Editor Tab -> Clear the Auto Syntax Check box
Sadly, this won't solve all your problems, as the VBA Editor tends to have a mind of its own, for better or worse.
Taking it out of design mode fixes it every-time on vba2003 - its was driving me crazy at first ... i did notice it might have something to do with the web control but when i take it out of design mode it works fine ... just toggle that to get it to behave :)
I have had this same problem several times recently, and has driven me crazy.
After reading this post all the different fix-ups mentioned (none worked for me), I recalled I have been playing lately with Internet Explorer Control, opening Internet Explorer from VBA.
This is mentioned in some of the answers in this post.
This got me in the right path and, in order to fix it, I had to first delete all iexplore.exe instances (alt+control+delete), closed Excel and open excel again.
(iexplore.exe had been opened invisible from the VBA code, and I didn't know they were running)
That fixed the bug.
I have been programming quite heavily with VBA for over 4 years, and never had this problem.
Just a couple of weeks ago I started using IE control, and I started getting this problem...so in my case I can only assume the bug is directly related to the IE control.
I am running both excel 2003 and 2007 in same PC at the same time, and the problem only happens with excel 2007.
None of the above for me.
I had a Application.OnTime timer that fired every second and this triggered a recalculation of something: commenting it made my day.
This has started happening to me recently after adding a Timer event to an Access 2007 form. The VB editor "finalizes" the current line (as if you had moved the cursor off of the statement; I have auto syntax checking off) each time the event fires (initially I had it set to 1 second, now it is set to 5 seconds, and the behavior scales accordingly). In order for the event code to execute, the application has to ensure that it has been compiled. Presumably, the editor needs to be in a "sane" state to do this, as it probably has to check for code dependencies among modules. Note that the behavior occurs regardless of whether any dependent code is actually loaded into the editor at the time. Note also that resetting the execution state doesn't affect the timer event firing. As a practical matter, one could close the triggering form, switch it to design view, set a breakpoint in the triggered code, or increase the timer interval while working with the editor.
In contrast to abhishek's comment, changing the settings of Tools/Options.../General/Compile On Demand and/or Background Compile did not affect the issue.
If it helps, none of the previous answers solved mine. Only solution appeared to be to close the xls file and reopen it. Frustrating to have to do every 30 mins but at least it works. Would love to know why it's recompiling and cleaning the text... should really be an option to disable the text cleanup but couldn't find it.
Turn off Tools > Options > General > Background Compile. This solved it for me.
This is a long standing problem that could have various causes. I had this same issue occur in the Access VBE (so naturally the Excel answers weren't relevant). After a LOT of digging I finally got it fixed with the solution below. First a recap though:
If you are here because of this issue in Excel, try the solutions above first. To summarize:
The most common issue in Excel is that the Design button is toggled. Toggle that and see if the behavior changes as submitted by Dmitry Frenkel above
If that doesn't work, check for the "Load Test Report" AddIn as mentioned by Ade.
Those are really the two main causes in Excel, but if neither of those solutions work, then scroll through the rest of the solutions here. All are valid possibilities for the cause. In Access the cause is pretty straight forward. It's a timer issue on a form somewhere. I found this solution from here by User Kevin K. Sullivan.
Copy the following line of code onto the clipboard. (You might need to
paste it into a text editor first and coerce it onto one line, depending on
your newsreader. It must be one line.)
For i = 0 to Forms.Count -1: Debug.Print Forms(i).Name, Forms(i).TimerInterval: Next i
Switch to Access.
Press Ctrl-G to go to the Immediate Window.
Press Ctrl-V to paste in the code.
Press enter to to run the code. All open forms will be listed. Any non-zero timer intervals are your culprits. Simply close that form (It may be invisibly open from another process than the one you thought you were dealing with).
I think the solution for Access here is what the user Dom was trying to say above. I guess the down votes were because it wasn't explained very well and/or because he was speaking of Access when the OG issue was in Excel. Regardless, he is likely on point if you are here because of the VBE in Access.
I hope this helps people. I know I kept finding this page when researching this issue, so that's why I thought I'd update this solution here.
I hit this problem today on a fresh install of Excel 2010 Beta 2. None of the above made any difference, but going into the trust center and disabling all application add-ins fixed the problem for me.
I have Office 2010 Pro and I had the same issue. As I type the space between each word was being deleted. After trying each of the options turning them on and off the only way I found working was to disable the Winzip Courie(excel) add-in. This is done thru the Options dialog box Add-Ins section.
In office 365 I had the same issue - what worked for me is I saved the file with a different name and when I re-opened the new file the problem went away.
I found this issue pops up when I had AutoSave on. Turning that off let me code without it compiling every second.
I don't think I've ever seen the VBE remove a space when I've stopped typing. It will remove trailling spaces from lines if you move to another line, but that's something different and not behaviour that I think can be altered.
The removal of spaces in the VBA editor for Access occurs when a form is open in Form("Execute") mode. This is probably due to background executions based on "On Timer" methods. Close the form in Access solves the problem in VBA.