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Using Microsoft Excel 2010, I noticed two kind of controls that can be inserted into a document: Form Controls and ActiveX Controls.
What is the difference between them?
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In general, use ActiveX controls when you need more flexible design requirements than those provided by Form controls. ActiveX controls have extensive properties that you can use to customize their appearance, behavior, fonts, and other characteristics.
Legacy controls are best if you intend to collect data from the form in a text-delimited file. They work only when you protect the document. Other advantages include easy tabbing between fields and shading of editable fields. ActiveX controls are best for webpages and they require macros in order to operate.
Form Controls are objects which you can place onto an Excel Worksheet which give you the functionality to interact with your models data. You can use these controls on worksheets to help select data. For example, drop-down boxes, list boxes, spinners, and scroll bars are useful for selecting items from a list.
ActiveX controls are component program objects that Microsoft developed to enable applications to perform specific functions, such as displaying a calendar or playing a video. An ActiveX control is a small program that other applications can reuse to enable the same functionality, without the extra development work.
Google is full of information on this. As Hans Passant said, Form controls are built in to Excel whereas ActiveX controls are loaded separately.
Generally you'll use Forms controls, they're simpler. ActiveX controls allow for more flexible design and should be used when the job just can't be done with a basic Forms control.
Many user's computers by default won't trust ActiveX, and it will be disabled; this sometimes needs to be manually added to the trust center. ActiveX is a microsoft-based technology and, as far as I'm aware, is not supported on the Mac. This is something you'll have to also consider, should you (or anyone you provide a workbook to) decide to use it on a Mac.
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