OpenModalWindow throws error first time the screen calls it - visual-studio-2012

I have been building an IT Ticketing / inventory system, and the program is done, now I'm adding instructions for the end users and the other techs in our school. Since I know nobody will read an instruction manual, I opted to make instructions for each screen, and put them in Modal Windows, activated by pushing a Help button I added to the Screen Commands section.
That works wonderfully, so I decided to capture the KeyDown event, and launch the window if they press F1. This is where things get a little weird.
If the HelpWindow for this particular screen has been opened at least once, pressing F1 opens it again with no trouble. If it has never been opened, pressing F1 results in an Error 'Control 'HelpWindow' doesn't contain a modal window. OpenModalWindow/CloseModalWindow cannot be used.'
After closing this error message, F1 will launch the HelpWindow exactly as expected. Very bizarre...
Background information:
Visual Studio 2012
Lightswitch project in VB (I work in both VB and C#, flipped a coin for this project)
The Modal Window is a group on the screen that is not visible, named "HelpWindow"; I use OpenModalWindow("HelpWindow") to open it. The exact same line of code in the HelpButton_Execute code, and the event handler for the KeyDown event.
It's the same method I use for every other modal window in the program, for submitting new tickets, adding equipment to the inventory, etc.
This problem only happens in the event handler, and only the first time the F1 key is pressed. The behavior is the same on every screen that has a help window.
My attempts to Google the problem were fruitless. Has anybody ever seen this behavior before?

That does sound very strange. I have to admit that I haven't seen anything like this myself with a modal window.
You don't mention where you're trapping the KeyDown key, so it's a bit hard to comment on that.
What I have seen sometimes, especially when doing something a little "different", is the error message not telling you the actual cause of the problem.
I would try wrapping the code with a dispatcher call, to make sure the call is being performed on the correct thread, as well as a try/catch to see if you can find the real cause of the error:
Private Sub YourClickHandler
Try
Me.Details.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(
Sub()
OpenModalWindow("HelpWindow")
End Sub)
Catch ex As Exception
Me.ShowMessageBox(ex.Message)
End Try
End Sub
I hope that helps, or at least points you in the direction of a solution.

Related

Is it possible to get rid of the delete warning sound in Excel?

When I'm dumping data from a failed macro the last thing I want is the stupid system to bleep at me.
I looked in all the options and couldn't find one.
I tried selecting and then unselecting Options>Ease of Access>Feedback Options>Provide feedback with sound (It was already unticked so I ticked and unticked it.
I tried running an On Open event with application warnings equal to false.
None of these things work. If a process stops and displays a warning message you need to click it doesn't need a sound to accompany it.
I know I could switch the sound off but what if I want to listen to music or a podcast?
it's extremely irritating and I'm dumbfounded that it's easier to jump out of a window than disable a totally un-necessary source of irritation.
So you've tagged this question Excel and VBA, but Options > Ease of Access > Feedback Options > Provide feedback with sound does not exist in the Visual Basic Editor (VBE). Not sure where you're getting that from.
Anyway, the easiest way to achieve this is hitting Alt+F11 and then going to Tools > Options in the in the VBE and then unticking "Auto Syntax Check".
Faulty code will still be marked in red (or whatever color you've chosen on the Editor Format tab), but the pop-up error message will not be shown and the annoying system beep will no longer be played.
It should be noted that this will NOT prevent run-time error beeps, only syntax error beeps during coding in the VBE. I suppose you could write a Windows API call to the winmm.dll file which plays system sounds, if you also want to get rid of the system sound accompanying run-time errors.

VBA Excel - Stop user from being able to use the mouse but allow the user to stop or pause the script

Good afternoon everyone.
*Note- I have looked for a couple of days for the answer to this question.
I have a bit of code that controls a separate piece of software to enter data.
I can not access the scripting side of this software, so I will just leave that bit out.
I have the following working.
Mouse movement.
Mouse Click.
Data input.
The only problem here is that while the script is running, I can still move the mouse manually. Which in turn can cause it to click on something wrong.
I know that
"BlockInput = True" deactivates mouse and keyboard.
This stops me from using the keyboard or it would work great.
"Application.Interactive = False" makes the cursor do the thinking thing.
This stops the program from clicking on the items I need to be clicked and still lets me use the mouse.
I hope this makes sense. This script will only be temporary until I get scripting access to the software.
Thank you in advance.

Can't enter break mode at this time

This has been happening increasingly, when I have a sheets.add or sheets.delete in excel VBA. After searching and searching I finally found the official Microsoft support page on it. My question is, does anyone know why I could have stepped through this code just fine over and over, and then all of a sudden it starts doing what Microsoft says it would always do, and is there a way to fix it?
Sub foo()
Sheets.add
debug.print "sheet added" 'breakpoint here
End sub
It's as simple as that. You won't be able to recreate it, because the issue I'm asking about is the fact that it doesn't happen at first. It works just fine over and over then randomly presents the error described in the linked Microsoft support page.
Check if Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility is being referenced in the project.
You can check that in the Tools/References Menu on the Visual Basic window of the project.
Referencing Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility prevents the program having its execution suspended:
Excel helps says specifically:
A change was made programmatically to the project using the extensibility (add-in) object model. This prevents the program from having execution suspended. You can continue running, or end execution, but can't suspend execution.
You are unable to step through code when making changes to the project (dynamically eg using InsertLine etc). the code can be run but not stepped through.
Deleting certain objects including ActiveX objects actually changes the VB project. It took me some time to realize that the following line of code prevented the VBE from entering break mode:
Excel.ActiveSheet.DrawingObjects.Delete
If you can identify the code causing the issue, and the order of operations isn't important, move it to the end of your script.
Here are a few suggestions which are not fool-proof,
Firstly, verify that the error does not occur if a breakpoint is not set.
If it doesn't, try a few other things:
From the VBE Debug menu, "Compile VBA Project", it's worth a shot.
Delete the line entirely. Run the code. Then put the line back in and try again with the breakpoint.
Add a DoEvents statement after the Sheets.Add
Use a MsgBox instead of a breakpoint on a Debug.Print. With the message box displayed, attempt to manually break using ctrl+fn+End. (At this point, "breaking" isn't necessary but it would be interesting to see whether you can break this way)
Put a breakpoint on Sheets.Add instead; practically speaking, there's no reason to put the breakpoint on a Print statement if you can just put it on the preceding line.
Are there any Addins? If so, disable all of them and re-enable one at a time, testing to see which one may contribute to the error.
Yet another Excel/VBA glitch.
When it happens to me when I click a button running a macro:
I first try to directly run the macro from VBE,
if it fails, then I put a breakpoint at the first instruction of the macro,
if it still fails, I try both,
or, after clicking the button and breaking on the first breakpoint, I do a single step (SHIFT F8) and then I can let debug run freely as usual (F5).
And so far I don't get this error anymore.
Probably not foolproof either but worth a try.
Ran into the same issue, and (as far as I can tell) the only relevant answer here is Answer 5 (i.e. the one provided by Chrisb).
I've been working with vba for (too many) years now, and never encountered this until I had a project that needed vba to delete ActiveX controls. In my case, the 'ActiveX controls' were a spurious result of data copied in from a web page.
Additionally, there appears to be a way around the issue. Using the following code (versus, e.g. deleting the ActiveX as a shape), seems to circumvent the issue:
On Error Resume Next
ActiveSheet.OLEObjects.Visible = True
ActiveSheet.OLEObjects.Delete
On Error GoTo 0
I say 'appears' and 'seems' above as implementing the above solved the issue for me. However, before I implemented same, I had made other code changes and I have not yet fully regression tested for all possible other reasons the problem was resolved. :)
This has happened to me multiple times and this solution works for me.
Run a different macro within the same VBA project.
Then go back and run the same macro that is causing the pop-up message to appear. The message should no longer appear.

Tcl/Tk widgets and FocusOut not working as expected on linux

Do anyone know why FocusOut event is not working on linux?
I have 1 enabled textbox and 3 disabled combobox.
I bind the textbox with FocusOut event where it will call a proc that enables or disables the 3 combobox.
It works perfectly on Windows. However, it doesn't seem to trigger the FocusOut event when this action is done on Linux. One weird thing is that if I click on buttons, FocusOut event seems to be triggered.
Could it be because my combobox are disabled?
But why does it work on Windows?
I really hope someone can help me please.
Thanks in advance.
I have observed in the past that some window managers steal the focus temporarily from Tk on each button click before setting it back; I suspect that this has to do with the way that key event handling works, but I am unable to check at the moment (due to being on OSX, where things are different). Because of the complexities involved, I'd suggest that if you bind to <FocusOut>, you should also check whether you get a <FocusIn> event shortly after; a little extra delay (e.g., 0.1s) before doing the update of the buttons' disabled status will not hurt.
Or you could hang the code to do the disabling off the entry widget validation engine, perhaps like this:
.e configure -validation focusout -validatecommand doButtonEnableDisable
The validation interface is the same for both the old style entry and the new style ttk::entry widgets. It's also supported by spinboxes. Just be aware that you need to return a boolean true from doButtonEnableDisable or you'll reject the change to the entry, and you should take care to ensure that your code does not produce an error or it will disable itself; the docs list the things to watch out for.

Excel VBA App stops spontaneously with message "Code execution has been halted"

From what I can see on the web, this is a fairly common complaint, but answers seem to be rarer. The problem is this:
We have a number of Excel VBA apps which work perfectly on a number of users' machines. However on one machine they stop on certain lines of code. It is always the same lines, but those lines seem to have nothing in common with one another.
If you press F5 (run) after the halt, the app continues, so it's almost like a break point has been added. We've tried selecting 'remove all breaks' from the menu and even adding a break and removing it again.
We've had this issue with single apps before and we've 'bodged' it by cutting code out of modules, compiling and then pasting it back in etc.
The problem now seems to relate to Excel itself rather than a single .xls, so we're a little unsure how to manage this.
Any help would be gratefully received :)
Thanks,
Philip Whittington
I have found a 2nd solution.
Press "Debug" button in the popup.
Press Ctrl+Pause|Break twice.
Hit the play button to continue.
Save the file after completion.
One solution is here:
The solution for this problem is to add the line of code
“Application.EnableCancelKey = xlDisabled” in the first line of your
macro.. This will fix the problem and you will be able to execute the macro
successfully without getting the error message “Code execution has been interrupted”.
But, after I inserted this line of code, I was not able to use Ctrl+Break any more. So it works but not greatly.
This problem comes from a strange quirk within Office/Windows.
After developing the same piece of VBA code and running it hundreds of times (literally) over the last couple days I ran into this problem just now. The only thing that has been different is that just prior to experiencing this perplexing problem I accidentally ended the execution of the VBA code with an unorthodox method.
I cleaned out all temp files, rebooted, etc... When I ran the code again after all of this I still got the issue - before I entered the first loop. It makes sense that "press "Debug" button in the popup, then press twice [Ctrl+Break] and after this can continue without stops" because something in the combination of Office/Windows has not released the execution. It is stuck.
The redundant Ctrl+Break action probably resolves the lingering execution.
I found hitting ctrl+break while the macro wasn't running fixed the problem.
I would try the usual remedial things:
- Run Rob Bovey's VBA Code Cleaner on your VBA Code
- remove all addins on the users PC, particularly COM and .NET addins
- Delete all the users .EXD files (MSoft Update incompatibilities)
- Run Excel Detect & Repair on the users system
- check the size of the user's .xlb file (should be 20-30K)
- Reboot then delete all the users Temp files
I have came across this issue few times during the development of one complex Excel VBA app. Sometimes Excel started to break VBA object quite randomly. And the only remedy was to reboot machine. After reboot, Excel usually started to act normally.
Soon I have found out that possible solution to this issue is to hit CTRL+Break once when macro is NOT running. Maybe this can help to you too.
Thanks to everyone for their input. This problem got solved by choosing REPAIR in Control Panel. I guess this explicitly re-registers some of Office's native COM components and does stuff that REINSTALL doesn't. I expect the latter just goes through a checklist and sometimes accepts what's there if it's already installed, maybe. I then had a separate issue with registering my own .NET dll for COM interop on the user's machine (despite this also working on other machines) though I think this was my error rather than Microsoft. Thanks again, I really appreciate it.
I have had this problem also using excel 2007 with a foobar.xlsm (macro enabled ) workbook which would get the "Code execution has been interrupted" by simply trying to close the workbook on the red X in the right corner with no macros running at all, or any "initialize" form, workbook, or workheet macros either. The options I got were "End" or "Continue", Debug was always greyed out. I did as a previous poster suggested Control Panel->Programs and Features-> right click "Microsoft Office Proffesional 2007" (in my case) ->change->repair.
This resolved the problem for me.
I might add this happened soon after a MS update and I also found an addin in Excel called "Team Foundation" from Microsoft which I certainly didnt install voluntarily
I would like to add more details to Stan's answer #2 for below reasons:
I faced this issue myself more than dozen times and depending on project conditions, I chose between stan's voodoo magic answer #1 or #2. When I kept on facing it again, I become more inquistive that why it happens in first place.
I'd like to add answer for Mac users too.
There are limitations with both these possible answers:
if the code is protected (and you don't know password) then answer #1 won't help.
if the code is unprotected then answer #2 won't let you debug the code.
It may happen due to any of the below reasons:
Operating system not allocating system resources to the Excel process. (Solution: One needs to just start the operating system - success rate is very low but has known to work many times)
P-code is the intermediate code that was used in Visual Basic (before .NET) and hence it is still used in the VBA. It enabled a more compact executable at the expense of slower execution. Why I am talking about p-code? Because it gets corrupted sometimes between multiple executions and large files or just due to installation of the software (Excel) went corrupt somewhere. When p-code corrupts. the code execution keeps getting interrupted. Solution: In these cases, it is assumed that your code has started to corrupt and chances in future are that your Excel workbook also get corrupt giving you messages like "excel file corrupted and cannot be opened". Hence, as a quick solution, you can rely on answer #1 or answer #2 as per your requirements. However, never ignore the signs of corruption. It's better to copy your code modules in notepad, delete the modules, save & close the workbook, close the excel. Now, re-open the workbook and start creating new modules with the code copied earlier to notepad.
Mac users, try any of the below option and of them will definitely work depending on your system architecture i.e. OS and Office version
Ctrl + Pause
Ctrl + ScrLk
Esc + Esc (Press twice consecutively)
You will be put into break mode using the above key combinations as the macro suspends execution immediately finishing the current task. This is replacement of Step 2.
Solution: To overcome the limitation of using answer #1 and answer #2, I use xlErrorHandler along with Resume statement in the Error Handler if the error code is 18. Then, the interrupt is sent to the running procedure as an error, trappable by an error handler set up with an On Error GoTo statement. The trappable error code is 18. The current procedure is interrupted, and the user can debug or end the procedure. Microsoft gives caution that do not use this if your error handler has resume statement else your error handler always returns to the same statement. That's exactly we want in unwanted meaningless interruptions of code execution.
My current reputation does not yet allow to post this as a comment.
Stans solution to enter the debug mode, press twice Ctrl+Break, play on, save did solve my problem, but I have two unexpected twists:
My project struture is password protected, so in order to get into the Debug Mode I had to first enter Developer mode, click on the project structure and enter the password.
My project is a template file (.xmtl). I opened the file via double click which opens it as .xml with a "1" at the end of the previous file name. I fixed the bug as by Stans instruction and saved it as that ...1.xml file. When I then opened the template again, this time as template, and wanted to apply the same bug fix to that file, the bug was gone! I did not change this file and still no bug at executing the Macro. This means to me that the bug is not actually in the file, but in a (hidden) setting in Excel.
If it's a phantom breakpoint:
1 Delete the offending line of code
2 Run the code again
3 Repaste the line
I found this laughably simple solution after spending a couple days wading through all the answers here and elsewhere. I figured, if I link it to my original question it might help some other poor chap, since the question it's on is VBA break execution when there's no break key on keyboard and this is more applicable.
Link to original answer
I faced the same issue today. Resolved it with these steps.
Create a new module
Move the procedure that is causing the issue to this new module.
Save project
Run macro again.
This time, the code execution will run till completion without any intermediate stops.

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