Disable buttons in custom ribbon before opening a vbModeless UserForm

[heapifyman]

Hello everyone,

I have a custom ribbon, in which one button triggers opening a UserForm, which is not modal.
Then I would like to disable certain other buttons in my ribbon before the UserForm is shown.

I have the following code:

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"ribbonRefresh" does call

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to update the ribbon. Also, I have the necessary "GetEnabled" sub in my ribbon handling module (this works as expected).
But the buttons in the ribbon do not get disabled when the code is run.

However, if I set a breakpoint in my "GetEnabled" sub the buttons get disabled.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[heapifyman]

BTW, it doesn't make any difference if the UserForm is opened with vbModeless or not.
However, if I comment out the part

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the ribbon state is correctly updated, i.e. buttons are disabled.

[OllieB]

Perhaps the display of the user form interrupts the ribbon update process. You go try inserting a DoEvents in between the ribbon update instruction and the display of the form, or call the RibbonRefresh from within the form_initialise routine. Just guessing.

[heapifyman]

BTW, it doesn't make any difference if the UserForm is opened with vbModeless or not.
However, if I comment out the part

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the ribbon state is correctly updated, i.e. buttons are disabled.

[heapifyman]

Unfortunately, neither adding a DoEvents nor moving the ribbonRefresh to UserForm_Initialize or UserForm_Activate did the trick

[heapifyman]

I put a breakpoint in my ribbon's GetEnabled sub. And it seems it is simply not called at all.

[OllieB]

But is does get triggered when you close the form, or is the event lost altogether?

[heapifyman]

Yes, GetEnabled is triggered if I close the form.

[OllieB]

No idea, what happens if you call the ribbon_routine and then query the status of the button you have just disabled (all before displaying the form). Would that perhaps force the update of the ribbon?

[OllieB]

The only problem I can find on GOOGLE, refers to a form being displayed as modal. I know you stated that you displayed the form modeless. What about the actual form properties, does that say modal=false, if not then can you try that one as well?

[heapifyman]

Set "ShowModal" property on "UserFormFoo" to "False". No Change

[OllieB]

Ok. I tried, but I am out of ideas/options,unless you have set application.screenupdating=false somewhere

You need someone smarter than me to solve this problem.

[heapifyman]

Ok. I tried, but I am out of ideas/options,unless you have set application.screenupdating=false somewhere

You need someone smarter than me to solve this problem.

I don't think so but I'll check again for application.screenupdating=false
Thanks for your efforts.

[OllieB]

PS. also check for Application.EnableEvents= False when you are at it.

[heapifyman]

PS. also check for Application.EnableEvents= False when you are at it.

Ok, there's neither an Application.ScreenUpdating=False nor Application.EnableEvents=False anywhere in the code.
However, the problem seems to be that I start a kind of infinite loop after initializing the UserForm:

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This is because I'm waiting for some events from an external system, whose result is to be displayed in the UserForm.

The code looks like this now:

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If I comment out the loop in startLoop, the ribbon gets updated as desired.

Any ideas how to improve this would be welcome.

[JosephP]

perhaps have a separate routine to load the userform and call it using ontime so the button code would be

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[heapifyman]

Nope, didn't work.

[OllieB]

Ok, simple. In the DoWhile loop include a DoEvents statement. I think the ribbon update is not getting a chance to occur, because you are looping in this manner. You could also all a sleep in the DoWhile loop again to allow your PC to catch up.

I would code (in this case as I do not believe in that sort of loop

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[heapifyman]

Yeah, the loop already has a DoEvents and a Sleep...

BTW, I'm not a VBA expert and this loop seemed to be the only way to get what I wanted. If you have any suggestions for improvement, I'm all ears.

[JosephP]

how does the getenabled callback determine that the controls should be disabled?

[OllieB]

I think the problem is definitely in the loop part, in which (userform) routine is the loop executed, and what is coded inside the loop?

[heapifyman]

RibbonRefresh adds the button name to a collection. GetEnabled checks whether control.tag is in that collection.

[heapifyman]

The loop is now in its own sub in UserFormFoo.
Within the loop I ask a custom dll for some result values (the details of which I am not allowed to reveal). If a result exists, these values are then displayed in the UserForm.

[OllieB]

- From which UserForm routine do you call this sub?
- Is the call Asynchronious or Synchronious? (in other words does the dll called immediately return back a value, or wait for the value to become available)

[OllieB]

Could you try starting the loop via a button?

[JosephP]

what was the code you used with the ontime method-were you still calling the startloop directly?

[heapifyman]

the sub is called from the callback for the ribbon button that starts UserFormFoo.

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the dll call is synchronous

[heapifyman]

what was the code you used with the ontime method-were you still calling the startloop directly?

I tried:

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[heapifyman]

Could you try starting the loop via a button?

I tried just starting the loop from the button, with the same result: Ribbon state does not get updated.

As I said before, the problem must be somewhere within the loop because the ribbon state gets updated if I comment out the loop...

However, I'm so sick of stupid VBA now that I'm thinking of just leaving all buttons enabled and add a guard to their callbacks that checks if the UserFormFoo is currently running.
Not as nice but I hope that will work.

[JosephP]

did you try using ontime to call a routine that both shows the form and starts the loop? that way the button onAction callback can finish running before you load the form and start the loop

[OllieB]

So you are not starting the loop from within the form?

[heapifyman]

did you try using ontime to call a routine that both shows the form and starts the loop? that way the button onAction callback can finish running before you load the form and start the loop

Holy ****. That seems to be working. Thanks a lot!

[JosephP]

you're welcome :-)