Have you ever tried to access a tool or command that is supposed to open a Revit dialog box, but the box/window doesn’t appear and it seems to lock your software? Believe it or not, in many cases, the dialog box/window is open, but it’s caught in purgatory or dead man’s land, so it does not appear on your screen.

Recently I ran into this problem using the Pantone Color Picker dialog box in Revit. I was demonstrating how to change the color of an element to a class. When I picked the [PANTONE…] button, my cursor began to spin and Revit appeared to lock up. Unfortunately, I was in a mode where I could not troubleshoot what was going on, so I had to shut Revit down with [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del].

After doing some research, I stumbled upon a blog post written by a former Ideate colleague, Shruti Harve. In 2011, she explained the problem and how to fix it.

Here is what is going on:

If you work with multiple monitors and/or switch back and forth between a projector, the conference room television, and a second or third monitor, various dialog boxes in multiple software programs pop up on these other video sources. When you change the video sources and access a tool/command that opens the dialog box, the dialog box may not appear. This problem is caused by the window/dialog box getting “stuck” outside of your current video configuration…aka purgatory.

Here is how to fix it:

• After accessing the tool/command to open a dialog box/window, press [Alt]+[Spacebar], then press M, then press any arrow key on your keyboard. This will “stick” the dialog box/window to your cursor.
• Move the mouse around until the dialog box/window is placed where you want it located.

This is an oldie but goodie Windows trick… Now to get back to using my Pantone colors.