I recently spent several frustrating hours trying to discover why my Visual Basic Editor (VBE) lost all of its menus and toolbars in Microsoft Access. The same happens in the VBE of all Office products.
I was using a Surface Pro 3 upgraded to Windows 10 and with Office 2013. I’ve used the VBE many times with this set up, and I could not see what had changed.
Googling brought up several similar issues for Word and Excel VBE, but those involved corrupt registry keys. I tried modifying the registry. I tried Repairing my Office install. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Office. Nothing worked.
Another thing I noticed was that I could not Restore the VBA window. I could Minimize and Maximize but not Restore. And then I discovered that I couldn’t Restore ANY windows. This made me realize (finally) that I was in the Windows 10 new Tablet Mode. Tablet mode doesn’t allow Restored windows.
I set my Surface to Desktop Mode and all the VBE menus and toolbars appeared as normal.
I’ve reported this to Microsoft and they can reproduce the problem. I’ve been assured that a fix will be forthcoming since the bug affects so many products.
Interestingly, I use Open Live Writer to edit these blogs. It used to be a Microsoft product, but they released it to Open Source. I had the same issue with the Ribbon not appearing when I was in Tablet Mode, so the problem may be more wide-spread than the VBE of Office.
As far as I know, it affects all versions of Office, but only those Window 10 installs that have a touch screen.
I’d love to hear if anyone out there finds an exception, or if any other programs are affected by Tablet Mode.
