The Word MVP Site

• Word Home
• Word:mac
• Troubleshoot
• Tutorials
• Find Help
• About Us
• Contact
• Sitemap

• Word on the PC
  • Application errors
  • Customization
  • Drawing/Graphics
  • Formatting
  • General
  • Microsoft Word MVP FAQ
  • Macros/VBA
  • Mail merge
  • Numbering
  • Cross-Application dev.
  • Tables, Fields & Forms
  • Userforms
  • Tutorials

• Word on the Macintosh
  • Troubleshooting
  • Customization

  

How to disable the X close button on a UserForm

Article contributed by Jonathan West

Sometimes, you don't want to allow the user to close a UserForm until they have gone through all the steps you have specified.

Word VBA UserForms don't directly allow you to disable the Close button, but a little Windows API trickery can get round this.

Paste the following into the UserForm's code window for any form where you want the X greyed out and disabled.
 

Private Const MF_BYPOSITION = &H400

Private Const MF_REMOVE = &H1000

 

Private Declare Function DrawMenuBar Lib "user32" _

    ( ByVal hWnd As Long ) As Long

 

Private Declare Function GetMenuItemCount Lib "user32" _

    ( ByVal hMenu As Long ) As Long

 

Private Declare Function GetSystemMenu Lib "user32" _

    ( ByVal hWnd As Long , _

    ByVal bRevert As Long ) As Long

 

Private Declare Function RemoveMenu Lib "user32" _

    ( ByVal hMenu As Long , _

    ByVal nPosition As Long , _

    ByVal wFlags As Long ) As Long

 

Private Declare Function FindWindow Lib "user32" _

    Alias "FindWindowA" _

    ( ByVal lpClassName As String , _

    ByVal lpWindowName As String ) As Long

 

Private hWnd        As Long

 

Private Sub UserForm_Initialize()

 

  Dim hMenu           As Long

  Dim menuItemCount   As Long

 

 

  'Obtain the window handle to the userform

  hWnd = FindWindow (vbNullString, Me.Caption)

 

  'Obtain the handle to the form's system menu

  hMenu = GetSystemMenu (hWnd, 0 )

 

  If hMenu Then

 

    'Obtain the number of items in the menu

    menuItemCount = GetMenuItemCount (hMenu)

 

    'Remove the system menu Close menu item.

    'The menu item is 0-based, so the last

    'item on the menu is menuItemCount - 1

    Call RemoveMenu (hMenu, menuItemCount - 1 , _

        MF_REMOVE Or MF_BYPOSITION)

 

    'Remove the system menu separator line

    Call RemoveMenu (hMenu, menuItemCount - 2 , _

        MF_REMOVE Or MF_BYPOSITION)

 

    'Force a redraw of the menu. This

    'refreshes the titlebar, dimming the X

    Call DrawMenuBar (hWnd)

 

  End If

 

End Sub

This code is a VBA adaptation of a VB6 code sample published by Randy Birch
(Visual Basic MVP) at http://vbnet.mvps.org/code/forms/killclose.htm (link removed by Lene Fredborg 3-Feb-2017).
I would like to thank Randy for permission to use his code in this article.