What is the difference between "Form Controls" and "ActiveX Control" in Excel 2010?

excel vba excel-2010 activex form-control
Rubens Mariuzzo picture Rubens Mariuzzo · Mar 16, 2013 · Viewed 227.5k times · Source

Using Microsoft Excel 2010, I noticed two kind of controls that can be inserted into a document: Form Controls and ActiveX Controls.

enter image description here

What is the difference between them?

Answer

StoriKnow picture StoriKnow · Mar 18, 2013

Google is full of information on this. As Hans Passant said, Form controls are built in to Excel whereas ActiveX controls are loaded separately.

Generally you'll use Forms controls, they're simpler. ActiveX controls allow for more flexible design and should be used when the job just can't be done with a basic Forms control.

Many user's computers by default won't trust ActiveX, and it will be disabled; this sometimes needs to be manually added to the trust center. ActiveX is a microsoft-based technology and, as far as I'm aware, is not supported on the Mac. This is something you'll have to also consider, should you (or anyone you provide a workbook to) decide to use it on a Mac.

Related questions

Excel VBA Run-time error '13' Type mismatch

I created a macro for a file and first it was working fine, but today I've been opening and restarting the file and macro hundreds of times and I'm always getting the following error: Excel VBA Run-time error '13' …

Read More
Copy an entire worksheet to a new worksheet in Excel 2010

I have found similar questions that deal with copying an entire worksheet in one workbook and pasting it to another workbook, but I am interested in simply copying an entire worksheet and pasting it to a new worksheet -- in …

Read More
Copying and pasting data using VBA code

I have a button on a spreadsheet that, when pressed, should allow the user to open a file, then copy columns A-G of the spreadsheet "Data", then paste the data from those columns on the current sheet. I have a …

Read More