Hi. I have a Word 2007 template where I've created a form with some ActiveX checkboxes. When I double click the template, it creates a new document where the checkboxes work just fine. But after I save the document as a .docx file, and then open it again, the checkboxes become images.



How do I make Word stop doing this, and keep the checkboxes active?

Thanks.

This may be related to the latest MS Office updates, which have broken the functionality of ActiveX controls. the offending updates are:
KB2596927 for Office 2007
KB2553154 for Office 2010
KB2726958 for Office 2013
Uninstalling these updates restores ActiveX functionality.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Update:

The following commands in a batch file will also restore ActiveX functionality without uninstalling the updates.
@del "C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\Microsoft\Forms\*.exd" /s
@del "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\For ms\*.exd" /s
@del "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Temp\Excel8.0\* .exd" /s
@del "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Temp\VBE\*. exd" /s
@del "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Temp\Word8.0\*. exd" /s

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks so much macropod. Since I don't know how to install a batch, I uninstalled the security update instead, and that worked. Do you know if there is any downside to having uninstalled that update?

Thanks again.

-Emery

Presumably you won't have whatever protection the update is supposed to guard against. I suspect the update will be reinstalled next time Windows runs its update schedule. To create & run the batch file, simply create a new text file using NotePad, copy the code lines to it and save it with a .bat extension (e.g. FixActiveX.bat), then double-click on the file in Windows Explorer. That's all there is to it - the batch file will delete some .exd files that cause the update to misbehave.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I had this problem also, after the updates. From another source I found that if you close all of Office then clear everything not in use from the User Temp folder the problem is resolved. The particular problem files are listed at
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...trols-disabled
which are in fact those listed by Paul earlier in the thread.

__________________
Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com