ZOrder Behavior Changed in Excel 2007?

[NOSLOW]

Argh! Form controls now *always* appear on top of shape/drawing
objects. What's up with that? Prior versions of Excel allows you to
send Form controls behind shape objects by right clicking on them and
choosing "Order->Send to back".

Ok, so you're probably asking "why would you ever want your form
controls to be hidden behind a drawing object?". Good question. I
developed an Excel application that dynamically displays floating
"help windows" made from the text box shape objects on top of my input
form. Actually, these pseudo help windows are comprised of several
shape objects because I went so far as to give them title bars (with
an "X" close button) among other features.

Now in Excel 2007, all the form controls are displaying on top of my
help windows.

Is this a bug or a feature?

 

[Jim Rech]

Is this a bug or a feature?

It "is" regardless. Can you hide the control as a workaround?

--
Jim
| Argh! Form controls now *always* appear on top of shape/drawing
| objects. What's up with that? Prior versions of Excel allows you to
| send Form controls behind shape objects by right clicking on them and
| choosing "Order->Send to back".
|
| Ok, so you're probably asking "why would you ever want your form
| controls to be hidden behind a drawing object?". Good question. I
| developed an Excel application that dynamically displays floating
| "help windows" made from the text box shape objects on top of my input
| form. Actually, these pseudo help windows are comprised of several
| shape objects because I went so far as to give them title bars (with
| an "X" close button) among other features.
|
| Now in Excel 2007, all the form controls are displaying on top of my
| help windows.
|
| Is this a bug or a feature?
|

 

[NOSLOW]

It "is" regardless. Can you hide the control as a workaround?

Yes, which works fine for new workbooks that have this workaround.
Workbooks created before this "fix" will always exhibit this behavior
when opened in Excel 2007.

I'm hoping this is a bug in Excel 2007 that will eventually get
patched. Actually, the release of Office 2007 has forced us to change
our business strategy. We're now developing web-based solutions using
open-source projects (we chose CakePHP) to develop our loan
underwriting tools, which will replace our Excel-based ones. I've had
my fun with backwards compatibility with MS versions. Now if we can
just convince our clients to use our products via Firefox instead of
IE...