hi folks,

i've got a bit of a wriggler here. any help would be appreciated.

in excel 2000 each workbook is opened in its own excel instance i.e.. i open
file1.xls and file2.xls and i can see both on the taskbar and can use
alt+tab to switch between them.

i have written some custom menus in file1.xls which are added in the
workbook_activate event and removed in the workbook_deactivate event. thus,
in theory, when i switch between file1 and file2, the menus should appear in
file1 and dissapear when i return to file2. this is however not the case. if
i use the mouse to click on the instances in the task bar, there is no
problem. however, if i use alt+tab, some of the time the menus are
activated, and some of the time they aren't.

i can't seem to find anything that this problem could be connected to. even
if i use the following simple code in file1:

Private Sub Workbook_Activate()
MsgBox "workbook is active"
End Sub

and have file2 is a new document, i still get the problem. i switch with
alt+tab from file1 to file2, and when i switch back, the msgbox is not
displayed.

i have noticed in the news groups that there are a number of people who have
built custom menus. do you also have this problem, or haven't you noticed
it, or doesn't it bother you? i like to work with the keyboard and it would
be great if i could get this working. i have already tried to using the
sheet_activate and window_activate events but they have same effect. does
anyone know which event i need to use in order to _always_ trigger my macro
when i move between windows or files?

regards,
gavin