Need a simple "Something is Happening" indicator

[LarryP]

Excel 2007 on XP.
On launch, a form opens. Form has a series of buttons to import data,
filter it, apply some colorization, etc. Actual worksheet is not displayed
until user clicks all appropriate buttons and closes the form.
Need something as simple as possible to let impatient users know something
is going on when they click a button, and discourage them from re-clicking or
prematurely clicking the next button. Was thinking of something like
having the currently active button "blink" until its portion of the code has
finished running. Have searched here for info on Excel timer events but find
it rather complicated compared to Access, my primary claim to fame.
Open to any suggestions on what simple visual "signal" I can use to tell the
user, (a) "I'm doing something," (b) "I'm done now, you can go ahead and
click the next button." When a button is clicked it of course shows the
dashed-line box indicating it has the focus, but experience has shown that's
not good enough for our users.

 

[JLGWhiz]

You can put at the beginning of the code that runs when the button is
clicked a line that hides the button and then at the end of that code put a
line that unhides the button. If they can't see it, they can't play with
it.

 

[Paul C]

Assuming the buttons are code driven, you could simply create a UserForm in
VBA with a text box like "Working - please be patient"

you could insert line in the code to show/hode at appropriate places

UserForm1.Show
UserForm1.Hide

This would keep the form visible until you want to hide it and you could use
the same form for each button routine

 

[LarryP]

That's probably simple enough even for me. I could change the wording
(label) for each button to indicate what specific part of the process is
running, and make the form modal so the user can't do anything else until it
closes. Thanks!