Phantom Drop down boxes in excel 2016

Anonymous
2016-01-14T14:47:08+00:00

I use lots of data validation drop down list and recently some phantom boxes have been appearing in my spreadsheets.  You can select the grey arrow but the list is empty.  You then select the cell to get the correct data validation list, which appears to overlay the the box.  Can anyone help?  I created a new spreadsheet from scratch and it appeared to have fixed it but today i opened the spreadsheet and once again i have phantom drop down lists!!!

I removed all the data validation from the cell and it still remained!

Can anyone help?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-02-04T22:07:17+00:00

    Hi Danny, did you try my workaround?

    I'm waiting for Thao to reply to your messages....I've had it for months since i updated to 2016 version..

    Cheers, Sean.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-02-12T14:26:16+00:00

    Is there still no progress on this?

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-12T23:02:28+00:00

    I got the following reply from Thao, the second option worked for me:

    You can run the following VBA code to remove those unwanted controls.

    Sub Test()

        While ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count <> 0

            ActiveSheet.Shapes(1).Delete

        Wend

    End Sub

    Caution:

    The code above will remove all shapes (form control, drawing shapes, textboxes, OLE, etc) from the sheet.  So make sure you have a backup copy of the workbook.

    Caution:

    If you only want to delete a specific object type (in this case, form controls), use the following code.

    Sub Test()

    start:

            For x = 1 To ActiveSheet.Shapes.Count

                If ActiveSheet.Shapes(x).Type = msoFormControl Then      ‘<<<<<<< you can change msoFormControl to other type

                    ActiveSheet.Shapes(x).Delete

                    GoTo start

                End If

            Next

    End Sub

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-12T23:14:29+00:00

    nothing to do with safe mode, it's an issue when the excel spreadsheet is saved and the current cell selected has data validation, when you re-open the spreadsheet the there is a drop down list.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-02-12T23:18:04+00:00

    this is nonsense.  why do have to put vba code into our excel spreadsheet?  This was not an issue with 2007, 2010 or 2013 versions it only appeared in the 2016 version of excel.  This is a bug in excel accept it microsoft!

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