Re: VBA Controls, when value changes boxes not enabled

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I think I have the answer - I need to redraw the screen to make it work. It
has been about 20 years since I've done any real programming and I'm a VBA
newbie, so took a while to realize it.

Just to clarify - the behaviour I expected was: I choose an option from the
combo box, the text box appears, I click on it and type the data.

What I was getting was: I choose an option from the combo box, the text box
appears, I click on it and my cursor does not change to the I bar (still a
pointer) and I can't type text into the box.

It was particularly confusing because sometimes it did work - the first time
I ran the slideshow this morning it worked fine for example. The next time
not - even after closing without saving and re-opening the file. Go figure!

By forcing a redraw using 'slideshowwindows(1).View.Slide#' after making the
box visible, it became available for data entry. I wish I could find a way
that doesn't depend on the slide number so I could shuffle the order of the
slides if I need to without recoding, but I suspect that's just PowerPoint
and I'll just accept it.

At least it works now. And I like doing the prototype in PowerPoint. It
really demonstrates the user experience, plus, on hidden slides, I can put my
swim lane diagram for the logic flow, and use the Speaker's notes to describe
the fields and validation for the real application. Then the development
team will get the whole package in one file.

Thanks for your help Steve!
Julie

"Steve Rindsberg" wrote:

In article <0AF47011-D95C-4708-AD62-734C559A3529@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Julibee wrote:
I'm working on a prototype for a system and I'm doing it in Powerpoint (OK,
that might have been my first mistake). It lets me mockup screens easily,
and I can demonstrate the flow, and easily change the order of the screens if
I want to.

I have a combo box on a slide. Based on the value selected by the user
(yes/no) I want other boxes to appear. There are 3 different sets of boxes
and labels that could appear depending on the value, and I've put them all in
the same space on my slide. (saving screen real estate and making it easier
for the client to fill data in is my goal here).

I have used the controls toolbar to put the various boxes on my slide. I
have a Setup button (command button) that loads the combo box values using
AddItem, and sets the various box properties .visible=False and .value="" (or
whatever initial value they should have).

I have a WhateverComboBox_Change() sub that checks the value in a simple If
statement, and when triggered the label and text box properties are set
..visible=true.

When I make a choice from the combo box in Slide Show mode, the labels and
text boxes do appear, but they are not enabled. I have added the property
..enabled=True to the code, but it hasn't fixed it.

Let's make sure we're on the same page ... is the problem that you can't click
on the text boxes and enter text or is it that the cursor doesn't automatically
land IN the text boxes when they're made visible?

If the former, try increasing the height of the text boxes or making the font
smaller. If the font is too big for the text box height, selecting the text can
get quite fiddly.

If the latter, that's unfortunately just the way PPT works. Controls on a slide
don't behave the way controls on a regular VB/VBA form do. The user has to
click on them to activate them.



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