Technical Advice No1
Issue: Drop-down menus stopped working.
Description: If the drop-down menus in my spreadsheets used to work on your computer but now do not, then you have probably installed a faulty Windows Update (this could have happened automatically if your Windows is set to update periodically). The faulty update disabled ActiveX components in Excel. This means that if you open a new Excel spreadsheet and go to the Developer tab and add any of the ActiveX controls, e.g. drop-down menu, then you will get an error message like 'cannot insert this object'. Likewise you would not be able to click any drop-down menus in my spreadsheets.
Solution: you have to delete a few files that the Windows Update left behind. These are stored in the temporary folder. Close Excel/Word and navigate to the below folders and delete the indicated files. Note that it is recommended to delete all files in the temporary folder from time to time as these are no longer required and take a lot of your HDD space.
Delete these files:
C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\Excel8.0\MSForms.exd
C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\VBE\MSForms.exd
C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\Word8.0\MSForms.exd
Now open Excel and you should have regained full functionality of the drop-down menus and other ActiveX controls.
More info: to read more about this issue go the original message at stackoverflow here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27411399/microsoft-excel-activex-controls-disabled
Description: If the drop-down menus in my spreadsheets used to work on your computer but now do not, then you have probably installed a faulty Windows Update (this could have happened automatically if your Windows is set to update periodically). The faulty update disabled ActiveX components in Excel. This means that if you open a new Excel spreadsheet and go to the Developer tab and add any of the ActiveX controls, e.g. drop-down menu, then you will get an error message like 'cannot insert this object'. Likewise you would not be able to click any drop-down menus in my spreadsheets.
Solution: you have to delete a few files that the Windows Update left behind. These are stored in the temporary folder. Close Excel/Word and navigate to the below folders and delete the indicated files. Note that it is recommended to delete all files in the temporary folder from time to time as these are no longer required and take a lot of your HDD space.
Delete these files:
C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\Excel8.0\MSForms.exd
C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\VBE\MSForms.exd
C:\Users\[user.name]\AppData\Local\Temp\Word8.0\MSForms.exd
Now open Excel and you should have regained full functionality of the drop-down menus and other ActiveX controls.
More info: to read more about this issue go the original message at stackoverflow here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27411399/microsoft-excel-activex-controls-disabled