How to prevent ActiveX events firing in VBA?

Question

I am searching for a better way to disable ActiveX events from triggering in an Excel workbook (though this would apply to all Office apps with ActiveX objects).

Hopefully something similar to Application.EnableEvents = false, though this does not work with ActiveX.

In the below example it's trivial to use a global boolean but I have a lot of event handlers for my ActiveX objects and it would be immensely easier for something I could universally apply to temporarily disable ActiveX events. I don't really want to add an if/exit sub statement to every single one of these methods.

To demonstrate this problem, create an ActiveX combobox in a worksheet and add the following to that sheet module

Public initializingContent As Boolean 
Private Sub intializeAllActiveXContent()

    'this doesn't apply to activeX events :'(
    Application.EnableEvents = False

    'this could work but is not really elegant
    'change this to false to show my problem in 
    'the intermediate window (called not once but twice)
    initializingContent = True

    ComboBoxTest.Clear

    ComboBoxTest.AddItem ("item1")
    ComboBoxTest.AddItem ("item2")
    ComboBoxTest.AddItem ("item3")

    'select the top value in the box
    ComboBoxTest.value = "item1"

    initializingContent = False

    Application.EnableEvents = True

     End Sub

Private Sub ComboBoxTest_Change()
    'I really don't want to have to wrap EVERY single ActiveX method
    'with something like this for a whole variety of reasons...
    If initializingContent Then Exit Sub

    Debug.Print "do stuff I don't want to happen when intializeAllActiveXContent() runs " & _
        "but I do when user changes box"
         End Sub

Answer 1

I know this is really old. But anyone who looks this up (first hit on google) might want a simple answer:

Lets say you have a Private Sub ActiveXControl_Change() that is getting called during an Application.EnableEvents = False and you want it to skip this just go:

Private Sub ActiveXControl_Change()
If Application.EnableEvents = True Then
'enter you code here

End If
End Sub