How to change Tkinter Button state from disabled to normal?

Question

I need to change the state of a Button from DISABLED to NORMAL when some event occurs.

The button is currently created in the DISABLED state using the following code:

self.x = Button(self.dialog, text="Download", state=DISABLED,
                command=self.download).pack(side=LEFT)

How can I change the state to NORMAL?

score 77 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 17 '15 at 00:20

77

You simply have to set the state of the your button self.x to normal:

self.x['state'] = 'normal'

or

self.x.config(state="normal")

This code would go in the callback for the event that will cause the Button to be enabled.

Also, the right code should be:

self.x = Button(self.dialog, text="Download", state=DISABLED, command=self.download)
self.x.pack(side=LEFT)

The method pack in Button(...).pack() returns None, and you are assigning it to self.x. You actually want to assign the return value of Button(...) to self.x, and then, in the following line, use self.x.pack().

edited Mar 17 '15 at 00:20

nbro

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answered Apr 16 '13 at 20:45

Sheng

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1

It should be added that this code would go in the callback for the event that will cause the button to be enabled. – Erik Nedwidek Apr 16 '13 at 20:47
I tried got the error: self.x['state'] = 'enabled' : 'NoneType' object does not support item assignment – scandalous Apr 16 '13 at 20:50
it's better practice to use NORMAL than 'normal' – herve-guerin Apr 11 '20 at 03:10

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 17 '15 at 00:21

8

I think a quick way to change the options of a widget is using the configure method.

In your case, it would look like this:

self.x.configure(state=NORMAL)

edited Mar 17 '15 at 00:21

nbro

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answered Dec 21 '13 at 09:26

guibe80

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 24 '19 at 10:02

This is what worked for me. I am not sure why the syntax is different, But it was extremely frustrating trying every combination of activate, inactive, deactivated, disabled, etc. In lower case upper case in quotes out of quotes in brackets out of brackets etc. Well, here's the winning combination for me, for some reason.. different than everyone else?

import tkinter

class App(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.tree = None
        self._setup_widgets()

    def _setup_widgets(self):
        butts = tkinter.Button(text = "add line", state="disabled")
        butts.grid()

def main():  
    root = tkinter.Tk()
    app = App()
    root.mainloop()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Yours is different because you did not import the constants from tkinter, `from tkinter import *` This will import DISABLED and other constants, otherwise `tkinter.DISABLED` will work the same. — Mikeologist, Nov 15 '19 at 06:51

How to change Tkinter Button state from disabled to normal?

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