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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-19T01:03:11+00:00

I have a user that is currently running my Winforms app on Win7. My

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I have a user that is currently running my Winforms app on Win7. My app allows users to select rows from an open Excel spreadsheet and drag-n-drop them onto the app. However, this user cannot do the drag-n-drop. The cursor changes to the “no” cursor (little circle with line through it) and the operation won’t complete.

I was researching drag-n-drop and Win7 and everything I found points to UAC and/or UIPI. I was looking for some solutions and am not sure if any of the below would work:

  • If the user logs in as admin (and as a result runs my app as admin) would that allow drag-n-drop to work?

  • Does the user need to turn off or change the settings of UAC/UIPI in order to be able to drag-n-drop?

I am not sure what the issue is. My app usually runs from C:/Documents and Settings/… (C:/Users/… on Win7). Does where it is running from matter? Does drag-n-drop not work because the user is not running my app with enough permissions? Are his Excel and my app on different permission levels? If so, what can be done about that? Note that even though my app allows users to just drag the file directly, that doesn’t work either.

Also, is there any way I can have the user reproduce this issue with other apps? Are there apps that come with Win7 that he can see the same problem with. For example, can this be reproduced using Notepad?

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Explaining this problem away by UIPI is a very long stretch. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not the user is logged-in as an admin, that doesn’t affect UAC and your program will be running with that same account anyway. The only way UIPI could kick in to stop a D+D is when your program is elevated and Excel is not.

    To get yourself elevated requires work and doesn’t happen by accident. You’d have to include a manifest so that the user gets the UAC prompt, you’d know about that. Or the user would have to change the desktop shortcut and tick the “Run this program as an administrator” option, she’s know about that. While UIPI can be bypassed for Windows messages (ChangeWindowMessageFilter), it cannot for Drag and Drop so if any elevation is going on then your stuck. The ultimate test is to simply ask the user to put the UAC slider all the way down.

    The much more likely scenario is that your DragEnter event handler simply isn’t happy with the data it sees and therefore doesn’t assign the e.Effect property. If you can’t get a debugger on-site then write a little test program that logs the values of e.Data.GetFormats() plus whatever else you use to check if the drop is acceptable. And don’t forget the obvious: the user simply fumbling the drag somehow.

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