PowerPoint hangs when Mouse Hovers over Custom Taskpane Toolstrip dropdownmenu buttons

Question

Hi There,

I had developed an addin for PowerPoint 2007 which is having a custom taskpane. The custom taskpane contains three toolstrips which contains buttons and on click of button, functionalities execute like Color Fill, left Align etc.

Everything works fine but whenever I select any object(autoshape etc.) and hover the mouse over the dropdown menu subitems within the toolstrip, move the mouse to other location and wait for few milliseconds so that the dropdown automatically collapse.

Then after the collapse of dropdown when i move the mouse back to slide and try to select any other object, then powerpoint got hang and shows very abrupt behavior like if you press enter key, two new presentations open automatically and if you press arrow key one presentation per key press opens.

But if you click the button on the toolstrip dropdown then everything works fine.

I am using MS-Office 2007 SP3.

The things I had tried till yet:

1. Created another addin which only contains the controls but no code, just to verify whether the code I had written is having some issue. But the problem still exists. I had not even handled the Button Click events within the new addin but still if i click on the button inside the dropdown, everything works fine and nothing hangs.

2. ServicePacks is also not an issue.

3. Tried to invalidate the toolstrip using code but failed.

Kindly look into the matter.

Answer 1

Hi Xengg,

Would you please tell me your VSTO runtime version?

T.X.

Answer 2

Hi T.X.,

We are not using VSTO. We had developed shared addin. But we are not using it in shared mode. It is only specific to PowerPoint. The .net framework version is 3.5  and language is VB .net that we are using.

Thanks

Xengg

Answer 3

Hi Xengg,

Are you able to provide us with the sample code/addin you are using. You can do this by probably uploading it on the shared drive.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,

Arthur

Answer 4

Hi Arthur,

Please find the sample project inside http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Source-code-to-PowerPoint-5f395920.

Also I would like to tell you that I had not written any customization code within this add-in. I had done the following steps:

1. Created a shared add-in inside VS 2010 using VB .NET
2. Added a usercontrol to the project.
3. Added two toolstrips in the usercontrol.
4. Added some buttons inside both the toolstrips, dropdownmenu and dropdownmenuitems inside one of the toolstrips.
5. Compiled and execute the code with PowerPoint 2007.

The only code, I had written is to create the taskpane under the Connect class. The code is as follows:

    Public Sub CTPFactoryAvailable(ByVal CTPFactoryInst As ICTPFactory) Implements ICustomTaskPaneConsumer.CTPFactoryAvailable
        CreateTaskpane(CTPFactoryInst)
    End Sub

    Private Sub CreateTaskpane(ByRef CTPFactoryInst As ICTPFactory)
        toolsCTP = CTPFactoryInst.CreateCTP("MyTrialAddin.DynamicToolStrip", "Task Pane Sample", Type.Missing)
        toolsCTP.Visible = True
        toolsCTP.DockPosition = MsoCTPDockPosition.msoCTPDockPositionLeft
        toolsCTP.Width = 50
    End Sub

At runtime, the add-in looks like:

Thanks

Answer 5

Hi Xengg,

I ran you addin set-up and got the task pane showing like you do. However I tried to reproduce the issue you are having but had no luck. Maybe I am missing something, can you please give me exact clear steps on how to reproduce this issue and also how you are setting up your addin incase I am missing something. For example Step1. Click on home tab Step 2 ...and so forth. I believe that can make sure we are both on the same page.

Finally can you tell me if you have any other add-ins running on your machine. To do so

1. Click on the Office button in PowerPoint 2007

2. Click on PowerPoint Options

3.Click on Add-ins

Take a screenshot or list back to me what you have under Active Application Add-ins. If you have anything available please disable them and test using your add-in only.

Thanks for your time

Regards,

Arthur

Answer 6

Hello Arthur,

Thanks for your reply. I had checked this even after removing all other addins but still the same behavior.

The steps to reproduce the issue is :

1. Open PowerPoint
2. Go to slide 1.
3. Select the body placeholder on that slide.
4. Click on the dropdown in the taskpane and hover the mouse (do not click) over the submenu items several times.
5. Quickly move the mouse out from submenu items to any other button(do not click) in the taskpane and let the opened dropdown to collapse automatically
6. Try to select the shape again.

I hope this will do.

Thanks

Answer 7

Hello Xengg,

Neither Arthur nor I can duplicate your problem so we’re not helpful.  Repeated mouse enter followed by mouse leave events may be causing the hangs but there’s no existing content that explains why that causes hangs.

Please consider amending your code in order to trace the Mouse Hover events. In the amended code add steps to log the status of the PowerPoint process and anything else that would provide information about what’s happening in the Add-in code. Refer to the code shown in the Forum thread at
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/csharpgeneral/thread/600f5718-434e-451f-9a04-0bb3f58b363e

A tool which might be useful is Process Monitor – a no-charge utility from SysInternals. Refer to the description of Process Monitor in the following content:
Sysinternals Process Utilities
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb795533.aspx

Another option is to enlist the service a Microsoft Support Engineer by opening a paid support incident.  Please visit the below link to see the various paid support options that are available to better meet your needs. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=fh;en-us;offerprophone
A support engineer can help you record a hang dump, then after you send that to him he can read the dump and explain what is happening within your code and PowerPoint at the time of the hang.

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