Thanks to all that answered to my question. There is one thing that all answers have in common: The problem is well known and seems to occur quite often. In addition, nobody (including ESRI) seems to know why it happens and how it can be avoided. Many people made suggestions that sound promising (not satisfying though, because there seems to be no way to reconstruct the dialog completly). Some suggested to use the "Import Dialog extension" written by William Huber. The name of the extension file is ddimp11.avx and you can find it at http://gis.esri.com/arcscripts Here is what Wiliam Huber tells us about his extension: Quite encouraging! .....The Import Dialog extension creates Dialog Editor documents out of any dialog created with Dialog Editor. It is for the desperate, curious, or brave. If you're desperate to recover a "detached" dialog, this extension will do it. If you're curious how certain dialogs are written, this will show you their inner workings. You have to be brave, because working with dialogs and Dialog Editor documents in Avenue is an entomological field trip: in no other place in computing will you find such a concentration of bugs in one place..... I didn't try out any of these suggestions because I managed to repair my dialog before the answers came in. I found out, that in the *.apr-file the Y-position of the dialog had changed from 200 to -200 (I can't imagine that anything I did brought the "-" there) Erasing the "-" brought the controls back once, after saving the project the "-" was back again (??). The next time I erased the "-" all controls moved to the upper left corner and got very small. At least I was able to move and resize them again. Here is what other people found out : Original question: >Hello list, > I have a really strange problem here with a dialog I built this > afternoon. The dialog has about 15 controls which call about 10 > different scripts and everthing worked fine until I saved and closed > the project (everything nice and compiled and working without > problems). Now I came back after watching the semi finals of the > european soccer champion ship (which probably has nothing to do > with the problem), restarted my computer, opened my project and to > my big surprise all the controls had moved up in the dialog main > window. I can only see the margins of the lowest controls and there > is no way to bring them down again. I was still able to run the dialog > the way it was before until I changed window sizes and so on and > compiled it again. Now I got a complete blank dialog window and > todays work seems to be gone. Has anyone an idea what could > have happenend and how I can get the controls back down where > they used to be? > Thanks Answers: I frequently have had the same problem. There are two solutions that I know of: 1. If you can still "see" some of the controls, you can "select all" from the edit menu and use the cursor to pull them down. 2. I have written a script (below) that can be attached to a menu item or a button on the dialog designer GUI. This script will drop the controls about 4 inches down the screen (this value can be adjusted). The script is below: Good luck! Tim Anderson Senior GIS Project Manager Barr Engineering Company Minneapolis, Minnesota (952) 832-2783 'Barr.SalvageDialog 'This dialog grabs the controls of a dialog document and pulls them down so they can be seen. 'Tim Anderson 'GIS Specialist 'Barr Engineering Company 'Minneapolis MN 'tanderson@barr.com thedoc = av.getactivedoc thewin = thedoc.getwin thegraphicslist = thedoc.GetGraphics for each item in thegraphicslist isVisible = item.IsNowVisible thePnt = item.GetOrigin newX = thePnt.getx newY = thePnt.gety-4.0 'change the 4.0 to a different value to adjust the amount controls are dropped thePnt = newx@newY item.SetOrigin(thePnt) end thedoc.getdisplay.flush thedoc.getdisplay.invalidate(true) *************** Hi Roland I have two options you can try to get your controls back to a workable area. If you can see any portion of the margin of the Dialog Box (in the Dialog menu), try to grab the margin and resize it slightly. That will sometimes bring the dialog back down. A second thing you might try is changing your monitor resolution. Go to your display properties window in the control panel. Pick the Settings tab Adjust the cursur in the Desktop Area to More You should see the picture change in the little monitor screen. Then go back into ArcView and see if your controls are visible with the new settings. Hope this is helpful... Good Luck Jim Haseker ******************* Roland, I thought the dialog designer was the best thing since sliced white bread when it first came out. Then I started having the same problems you described. I never figured out why it did that or how to get my controls back in position. After these problems, I made a decision to learn Visual Basic and make controls with it. I am very glad I made that decision. If you will type Visual Basic in the ArcView help topics it tells a little about using VB with ArcView. Also, learning VB now will help when ESRI releases ArcView 8.1. I'm interested in seeing your summary. Brent Walker GIS Analyst Montgomery Water Works and Sanitary Sewer Board Montgomery, Alabama ***************** I had the same problem and was equally dismayed. It seems like a real short coming to the dialog designer. I contacted ESRI and have included their response below. I did not write the script they suggested, but found that after I closed the project, reopened it and opened and closed the dialog many times I was able to see the controls again - a strange solution to an equally strange problem. Viel Glueck. Colin Colin Reilly Parsons Brinckerhoff 1 Penn Plaza New York, NY 10021 ESRI RESPONSE: We have seen this problem pop up before. It seems to happen when the dialog window and/or the arcview application window are maximized. To get your controls back, you can write an avenue script that loops through each control in the dialog, and places then back within the dialog frame's border. In the future, I would avoid maximizing either when working with dialogs. ***************** Hi there, I had the same problem. My solutiona was a "select all" for the controls and then moving things back all together to their place. Not nice but it works. But I never found out why this happens. If you discover anything interesting I would be very interesed to know more about this. thanks, Beatrice ***************** Hi Roland, am Fußball wird es nicht gelegen haben... selektiere alle Controls über das Menü und schiebe sie wieder in den Dialog zurück. Manchmal reicht es auch aus den Rahmen des Dialoges in der Größe zu ändern. Ursache (wahrscheinlich): Du hast den Dialog ausgeführt und außerhalb des Gültigkeitsbereiches des Ded- Fensters geschoben. Wenn Du am Editieren des Dialoges bist, schiebe den Dialog unterhalb der Menüzeile in das Fenstersegment, bevor Du ihn schließt. Ein weiteres Problem kann die Ausführung des Editors im Win.Maximize Modus haben (kann aber, auch wie das Halbfinalspiel, nichts damit zu tun haben). Bei mir hat es geholfen. Viel Spaß Helge Kippenberg ******************* I have had the same problem several times and it seems to be related to the great number of bugs in the Dialog Designer. What happens is something like someone had moved the controls inside the dialog. When I see this happening I close quickly the project without any saving or compiling and I try to reopen it. Quite often after a few attempts to reopen the project everything gets back to normal. It is advisable to export your dialog with the Write Text File option any times you complete a design stage. I suggest you to save your project as new one, delete(or rename) from the dialog editor your dialog, and then use the Import Dialog extension written by William Huber. The name of the extension file is ddimp11.avx and you can find it on the http://gis.esri.com/arcscripts/details.cfm?CFGRIDKEY=DAE18E0A- 3AFE-11D4-94 2F 00508B0CB419 . If you need more info please send me a mail. Regards, Sandu Cucuiet RomTelecom Baia Mare **************** hello colleague, I'm sorry I don't give any explanation, but I several times met the exactly same situation: what I would suggest to you is salvation through Bill Huber's Import Dialogs extension on http://gis.esri.com/arcscripts/details.cfm?CFGRIDKEY=DAE18E0A- 3AFE-11D4-94 2F00508B0CB419 If you'll get some usable answer, would you let me know, please? greetings milan ****************** Try making the dialog design canvas much larger. I lost some the other day for an unknown reason when the controls had all moved off the displayed area of the canves. David H **********************