Misalignment of controls after insertion or categories addition

Hi Jeffrey,

The mis-alignment of controls is a bug in Excel that’s very annoying. We’ve built a workaround into Modano to address this as follows:

1. Activate the workbook containing the mis-aligned/misplaced controls; then
2. Go to the Build tab, Content group, Forms menu, Refresh Workbook Controls.

This should fix your workbook.

The issue is caused by the fact that Modano tries to insert controls such that they hide when their rows or columns are collapsed (if grouped) and/or hidden. If this issue persists on your computer, you can switch off this functionality by unchecking the ‘Allow controls to move and size with cells if possible’ check box within the Modano Options dialog – which you can access via the Modano tab, Options – as shown below:

This should resolve your issue one way or another.

M.

A few more comments on this guys:

1. The issue seems most common when users are using high-resolution monitors that require scaling – i.e. resolution greater than the default 1920x1080 that we use, often scaled up to 125% or 150% because everything is too small. Always check for this, and try running at 100% scaling or using your primary monitor if you have multiple screens.
2. Unfortunately the Refresh Workbook tool (Controls Build tab, group, Refresh Workbook Controls) sometimes, but not always, works.
3. This issue appears more common to older versions of Excel, so ask the client to update to the latest version of Excel (via the File tab, Account button, Office Updates menu).
4. If all else fails, you can always replace the dropdowns with in-cell list validation, which can be most easily done by cutting and pasting the cell link cell block off to the right or into a new row (grouped to level 3 and hidden), changing its cell style to Number with 1 decimal place, and entering an INDEX/MATCH formula into it. Then no changes to dependent cell block formulas are required.

Hope this helps, it's very frustrating stuff.

Hi Matt,

Yes it's almost always a product of using high resolution screens which require scaling. Our engineers are constantly refining our code but even simple tests show that with scaled monitors placing controls programmatically does not result in them being positioned correctly in line with worksheet ranges.

The very simple - and often cheapest - solution to this is to buy a laptop and external monitors which don't require scaling at all. Our entire team now uses laptops (HP EliteBooks) with 1920 x 1080 resolution, and beautiful QHD monitors (2560 × 1440), thereby preventing the need for any scaling at all while providing plenty of screen real estate to do pretty much anything.

The great irony of computers and monitors with high resolution screens is that they're more expensive, slower and problematic with many software programs. Yet due to smart marketing many people still think that more pixels is better... Personally I say save the pixel obsessions for your mobile phone and non-business devices that you're using to watch videos, etc. For Windows and Office the above setup is the best, and most reliable, and more affordable.

M.