XL: Run-Time Error 1004 Setting Focus to Dialog Sheet

• Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Excel 98 Macintosh Edition

SYMPTOMS

If you run a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications macro that attempts to set the focus to a Microsoft Excel 5.0 dialog sheet, you may receive the following error message:

   Run-time error '1004':
   Unable to set the Focus property of the DialogSheet class

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the name of the control in the dialog sheet to which you are setting the focus contains any non-alphanumeric characters, such as hyphens (-), apostrophes ('), or colons (:).

Example:

   ThisWorkbook.DialogSheets("Dialog1").Focus = "true-false"

WORKAROUND

To prevent this problem from occurring, make sure that the names of controls in your dialog sheets contain only the following characters:

   A-Z
   a-z
   0-9
   Spaces ( )
   Underscore characters (_)

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.