1

While using MS Excel (Outlook, Word, or Power Point as well apparently) I create a userform. The toolbox shows up showing controls tab and 16 icons representing various controls. When I right click in some empty space in the tool box control area, a menu comes up listing "additional controls" at the top and two greyed out options below it. When I select "additional controls" a spinning blue circle appears briefly then disappears and nothing happens.

It is my understanding that a dialogue box should open at this point and I should be able to select some additional controls.

enter image description here

I noticed the problem while trying to follow a video on how to data scrape for my personal project which I asked for help here.

What I have tried

Creating a user form on another computer and then importing it to this one. No success.

Repairing MS Excel. This resulted in a full reinstall I believe as I had to re enter my product key. No success.

Resetting various registry keys as mentioned in this article. No success.

KB 369383 as mention as part of the process above. No success.

Issue described here but no solution, just a work around to something to what the person was trying to add.

Setting MS Excel to run in compatibility mode. There was no compatibility mode listed as an option under properties for the desktop icon.

Running as administrator even though my Windows account has admin rights. No change.

Cleaning the registry with both ccleaner and wise registry cleaner.

Running Excel in safe mode using excel.exe /s. Confirmed with (safe mode) in the title bar. No success.

My System

Windows 10

MS Office Professional 2013 - 32

(Note, no crystal reports added that I am aware of)

Additional Info

I tried another Windows 10 machine running same version of MS Office and it worked there, so it should not solely be a Windows 10 issue. My machine was an upgrade from Windows 7 - 64. The other machine was an upgrade from windows 8.

I created a new Windows user account and the dialogue box comes up for that account. At least now we know that its SOMETHING to do with my user account/profile.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Forward Ed
  • 9,484
  • 3
  • 22
  • 52
  • Have you tried with Excel launched as an admin (context menu "Run as administrator") ? – Florent B. Mar 20 '16 at 18:37
  • actually I have...in addition to the account I use has admin rights, but I will add that to the list of things tried. – Forward Ed Mar 20 '16 at 18:38
  • Is your office 32 or 64bits ? and have you checked the windows event log? – Florent B. Mar 20 '16 at 18:44
  • Office is 32, I was trying to use procmon, but it was coming up with something like 1300 ms excel registry events. I am not familiar with events log so I will try and find that and see if anything is listed. – Forward Ed Mar 20 '16 at 18:55
  • To get the event logs: C:\Windows\System32\eventvwr.exe – Florent B. Mar 20 '16 at 18:57
  • found that view via different route and launched it again via cmd with your path, looks the same. Dont know what I am looking for in there though is the bigger problem. I see nothing so far around the most recent time I tried to add "additional controls" – Forward Ed Mar 20 '16 at 19:08
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/106852/discussion-between-forward-ed-and-florent-b). – Forward Ed Mar 20 '16 at 19:11
  • Your issue is probably due to a foreign control which is broken or incompatible. I would try to clean the registry with CCleaner and Wise Registry Cleaner. – Florent B. Mar 20 '16 at 19:45
  • ran both ccleaner and wise registry cleaner. Rebooted the machine. Ran Excel as administrator. No change. – Forward Ed Mar 20 '16 at 20:17
  • Have you tried launching Excel in Safe mode? And perhaps a repair Office 2013 install. – PatricK Mar 21 '16 at 01:18
  • @Patrick No to the Safe mode, and yes to the repair (listed as second item of things tried) – Forward Ed Mar 21 '16 at 01:45
  • I have now attempted it in safe mode and have had no success. – Forward Ed Mar 21 '16 at 01:53
  • Also happens on Outlook, Word, PowerPoint too? You might want to try check for corrupted files. https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/929833 – PatricK Mar 21 '16 at 04:34
  • Same problem across the other Office progams (Outlook, Word, and Power Point. – Forward Ed Mar 21 '16 at 04:38
  • @Patrick Ran the Sfc /scannow at the command prompt run as administrator, When I check in excel again it still not displaying the dialogue box. – Forward Ed Mar 21 '16 at 04:58
  • At this stage, I can only think of a System Restore to an earlier time where this issue does not occur. The spinning blue circle usually shows when some process took too long (not responding) or crashes. – PatricK Mar 21 '16 at 05:03
  • I do not know if I have a restore point prior to this issue. 8( – Forward Ed Mar 21 '16 at 05:19
  • @Patrick, dang I added a comment but it did not save. I tried adding another windows account and it actually worked in that new windows account. As such I believe this is something completely related to my windows account (administrator and first account). I was wondering if there is a way to delete my entire office profile in my windows account so when I launch MS office it will set things up as if its the first time using it like what happened when I did it in the other profile? I thought this happened when I did the "FULL REPAIR" as it asked to authenticate my 25 character product key. – Forward Ed Mar 21 '16 at 13:23

3 Answers3

1

I found a solution to 'my' problem after spending 2-3 nights over this. It turned out to be a very simple and not-so-intuitive fix.

My problem was that when I right-click on the Toolbox, I do not even get to see the "Additional Control" option in the menu.

Click on the userform, so that its selected. Now go to Tools and Additional Controls is no longer greyed out. :)

Bharat Anand
  • 464
  • 1
  • 6
  • 14
  • Did not work...Additional controls is not greyed out for me. It simply does not do anything either than spin the cursor briefly. On my laptop it works fine. Under a different user profile on this same computer it works fine. Under my profile on this same computer it does nothing. – Forward Ed May 12 '16 at 00:56
  • Here's a quick video demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-Eh28KVVA – JamesF Aug 09 '22 at 10:17
0

Make sure the the Toolbox window is selected first then click on the Tools menu and Additional Controls should then be visible

Simon Cash
  • 11
  • 2
0

In my case it was the toolbox that needed to be selected and not the userform. When toolbox is selected, bam! the "Additional Controls" is no longer greyed out.

Morten
  • 1