Excel 2010 - Disable button - button

Question

I got 3 different form buttons on my spreadsheet. I want to disable 2 of them while one is pressed. Is that possible?
In C# the button can be true or false, but I can't find any examples of this in VBA Excel 2010?
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You cannot disable Form Buttons. If you want to use that functionality then use the ActiveX button.
However there is an alternative. Create 2 Public Boolean Variables and then in the click event of Button 1 Set the variables to True or False. Depending on the Boolean variables, the other 2 buttons will run their code or not. For example
Option Explicit
Dim enableB2 As Boolean, enableB3 As Boolean
Sub Button1_Click()
If enableB2 = False Then
enableB2 = True: enableB3 = True
Else
enableB2 = False: enableB3 = False
End If
'
'~~> Rest of the code
'
End Sub
Sub Button2_Click()
If enableB2 = True Then
'
MsgBox "Hello You clicked Button 2"
'
End If
End Sub
Sub Button3_Click()
If enableB3 = True Then
'
MsgBox "Hello You clicked Button 3"
'
End If
End Sub

Answer 2

I just wanted to offer an alternative approach for anyone hitting this from Google (that prefers not to use ActiveX buttons): rather than using global Boolean variables, you can grey the text in the button when it is disabled, and check the text colour in the macro assigned to the button before running the macro.
For example, if you have the following sub:
Public Sub SetFormButtonEnabled(ByVal oWks As Object, ByVal sName As String, ByVal bValue As Boolean) As Boolean
If blnValue Then
' Enabled: black text
oWks.Shapes(sName).TextFrame.Characters.Font.ColorIndex = 1
Else
' Disabled: grey text
oWks.Shapes(sName).TextFrame.Characters.Font.ColorIndex = 16
End If
End Sub
and function:
Public Function GetFormButtonEnabled(ByVal oWks As Object, ByVal sName As String) As Boolean
' Enabled if text colour is black, otherwise it is disabled
GetFormButtonEnabled = (oWks.Shapes(sName).TextFrame.Characters.Font.ColorIndex = 1)
End Function
then you can use the SetFormButtonEnabled function in the same way as you'd use the ActiveX button's button.Enabled property, and use GetFormButtonEnabled to check the button is enabled before executing the click macro.
To use these to answer the initial question, with a buttons named btnTest1-3 (I name the buttons with this sort of convention after creating, but Button 1-3 would also work fine) and click macros btnTest1_Click (again mimicing the ActiveX convention, but can be named anything):
Public Sub btnTest1_Click()
If Not GetFormButtonEnabled(Me, "btnTest1") Then Exit Sub
SetFormButtonEnabled Me, "btnTest2", False
SetFormButtonEnabled Me, "btnTest3", False
' Do some work...
End Sub
Public Sub btnTest2_Click()
If Not GetFormButtonEnabled(Me, "btnTest2") Then Exit Sub
' Do some work...
End Sub
Public Sub btnTest3_Click()
If Not GetFormButtonEnabled(Me, "btnTest3") Then Exit Sub
' Do some work...
End Sub