I've got a strange problem with the Data validation Text Box

The background color of Data Validation input message boxes is controlled by your display settings in Windows. Go to the Appearance tab of your display settings. Under Item select Tooltip. This might be set to black, or it might be set to some other color that Excel can't render for some reason. Try changing it to basic yellow and seeing if that fixes the problem.

-Ben

Thanks Ben,
My IS Dept has disabled the Control Panel. Is there any other way to do this?

Lori

The only other way to change your display settings would be through your sytem registry, which your IS department has probabaly also made inaccessible (for good reason). But if not, open the registry by selecting Run from the start menu, typing regedit, and then hitting OK. In the Registry editor, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors. Change the value of InfoWindow to "255 255 0" (yellow). You may have to restart for the change to take effect.

To check whether or not the tooltip background color is what's causing the problem, look at other tooltips. Let you mouse pointer hover over any toolbar button. Are the tooltip boxes that come up also black? If so, the displays settings are definitely the source of the problem. If not, I don't know what the problem could be.

What version of Excel are you using? I'm using 2000 and there's no place to change to color of the data validation boxes in the Options. If you're using Excel XP, maybe they added that option.

-Ben

The other tooltips are black but the font is white.

Ben,
I can read the other tooltips. I have Excel 97 running w/Windows 95. Thanks for the help.
Lori