Prevent user clicking in excel while processing

I am using VSTO and have excel to run reports.
The code uses a background worker process to retrieve the data while a timer runs in the main thread.

However this all works ok onluss the user opens a dialogue window for example something from the menu bar. If the user does this then the sheet doesnt have the focus and causes an error when it comes to draw the data on the sheet.

Is there any way to prevent users from clicking things while the system is busy.

I manually change the cursor to an hourglass but that doesnt prevent the clicking.

Can anyone think of a way to handle this?

change the excel process to not visible for the duration?

Im not sure I understand what you mean, the excel process runs in the main thread, I need the excel shhet to be visible to display the timer to the user while the query is executing in the other thread, providing this would be unnaffected how would I make the process not visible?

application.visible = false
where application is you excel object
if you are running multiple instances of excel you can hide one or more

But that makes the application invisible so the user will not be able to see anything including the work sheet and timer incrementing.

I only really want to prevent them clicking on menu items when the wait cursor is busy.

turn of the menu and toolbars? but they can still right click

i don't think you can stop them using menu items

FishGuy... not sure if this will help you?

Code:

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Private Declare Function ShowCursor& Lib "user32" (ByVal bShow As Long)

Sub ShowHideCursor()
    ShowCursor (False)
   
    '~~> Your Code
   
    ShowCursor (True)
End Sub

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