I love the toolbar idea. I could put all the tools on one row and group them to it’s easy to tell which is the, say, 6th button. Oh, maybe not. I’m up to 19 buttons on this thing now, so your idea of rows and columns might be easier.

1) show the userform modeless. 2) Shrink the buttons so that they, and consequently the uf, occupies a lot less space.

You could continue using the above in 2007.

Alternatively, and this is not very well thought out in terms of execution…for 2003 create a toolbar. Trap CTRL+1 to show the toolbar. While the toolbar is visible trap all number keys. The user types 2 numbers to select a toolbar button (1st number identifies the row, the 2nd the column). Execute that button. Release all the trapped keystrokes when the toolbar closes.

Stephen’s down load is a com dll(addin), that must be deployed with the vba project. and it only works with 2007 (i guess). the ones in 07 are slightly different from the one in xp and 03.

With panes (actions or task) you have to create a com object, which you cant do via VBA so hence your buggered.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa942864.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/gabhan_berry/default.aspx

There is a possible work around which I have been playing with but it’s not very good.

Yep. you can do it in all 2003 and 2002, although they are a little different (I hope I’m right now that I’ve said that!!!)

Stephen Bullen did some work to convert user forms to task panes, and he’s got some kind of download on his web site that will do the conversion for you. Task panes came out in 2003 (if not 2002), but in 2003 you needed VSTO to customize them. I think 2007 makes it easier, but I’ve never tired it.

I haven’t done a lot of user form programming so I’m not sure–I know you can tab between entry fields but didn’t know if you could change the focus on a collection of buttons that way.