Word: Controlbox toolbar won’t go away
October 29, 2008I have a couple of Word 2003 documents that always open with a floating Controlbox toolbar, and it drives me nuts.
I’ve never figured out where it came from or why it kept coming back. But the team over at WordTips have provided a solution to make it go away:
http://wordtips.vitalnews.com/Pages/T001596_Suppressing_the_Control_Toolbox_Toolbar.html
[Link last checked July 2008; link checked for compatibility with Word 2007 in September 2008]
Some other suggestions via email from someone who would prefer to remain anonymous:
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1. Check whether the document or attached template has a spurious / unnecessary VBA module, and if so delete it.
2. If there’s no spurious / unnecessary VBA module but the document or attached template includes a user form, ensure the user form is NOT being displayed in the VBA Editor Code Window.
3. Close the toolbars (as required).
4. Save the document.
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For those familiar with the VBA editor in Word, he suggests you try this:
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I found that a “NewMacros” module was included as part of the document structure (“NewMacros” is the default VBA Editor name for a new code module.) So the tree diagram for the document (not the underlying template) in the Project Explorer window was:
Project [Document Name]
– Microsoft Word Objects
… This Document
– Modules
… NewMacros
– References
… Reference to [Underlying Document Template Name]
Deleting the “NewMacros” module stopped the Control Toolbox / Design Mode toolbars displaying each time the document opened.
I then created a test document, added a “New Macro” module to the document’s VBA structure, and Bingo, the toolbars displayed when I saved, closed then re-opened the document. There’s no difference whether the module has code in it or not. Deleting the module from the test document stopped the toolbars displaying.
So it appears that the solution to these toolbars appearing is to delete the New Macros module, simple as that — one easy step.
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