Probably they are off screen.
Try the following in order.
ONE
Reset the resolution of your monitor to its highest setting and then see if
you can see the Sorting and Grouping dialog. If so, move it up and in to a
location where it can be seen at lower resolutions.
TWO
Turn on the sorting and grouping button (so it's depressed)
Then
1. Hit Alt+Space, followed by M then use the arrow keys (likely left and
up) until the window appears on screen.
or try
2. Hit Alt+Space, followed by MM then move your mouse ponter and click on
screen and the window will be visible
or try
3. Right-click on the taskbar and tile the open windows. That will bring
it back too, although this is messy if you have a lot of windows open. (and
this one probably doesn't work in most versions of Access if any)
THREE
There is a registry edit method, but hopefully one of the above should work.
Hack the registry (WARNING! DANGER!):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Access\Settings\SGST you
find 5 values.
Change the values to 1;1;1;1;1;
Indeed the Access window was deactivated when I selected the Sorting and
Grouping button. This indicated that the Sorting and Grouping window was
opened out of the screen area - but really far out!
In the Microsoft Knowledge base I came across a problem report regarding
orphan windows which corresponds to my problem: ACC97: Can't see Dialog Box
on System That Had Dual Monitor.
It appears that a registry key records the last position of the dialog box
in question; therefore, the dialog box opens in the saved position. If this
value in some way has been corrupted with fictious values the window will
always be tried opened out of the screen area. In my case the x-value were a
million times larger than the x-axis screen value. (my screen is 1024x768).
The cure for this problem is to edit the registry key in question.
(Caution!).
I opened the registry with Start -> Run -> regedit and found the key in
question at
(HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Access\Settings). The key
is SGST for the Sorting and Grouping Window which indeed held a corrupted
value. I pointed at the key name with the mouse, right-clicked and selected
modify. A new window opened with the value for easy editing. The numerical
values I used was "1;1;95;430;325;" which positions the window in the upper
left corner under the tool bars.
I hope this tip may come useful to others.
