Excel 2007 :: Will Not Enter Design Mode?

I am a happy user of Office 2007 and a casual coder. I am familiar with most of the basics of coding and enabling macos. However today, when I attempted to add some code to a workbook, I noticed that Excel would not actually enter design mode. Even though the design mode button will toggle and stay in the "on" mode, I cannot access VB property panel for any controls, even standard contols. Also, I am forced to CTRL-CLICK objects to select them and then am only presented with standard "Format Control" option, not object properties.

One other odd sympton... I can use the macro recorder to add code to a control (a checkbox for example), but when I try to manually add a line of code referencing that object (using the default name), the VB editor does not recognize the object. For example the IDE would not recognize and code a line for the "checked" property of a checkbox control when I check the box while in macro record mode.

These symptoms suggest to me that there is something wrong with the design mode "switch".

This all used to work fine, but it's been a while and many MS updates to my Windows 7/64 machine (now about 4 years old).