HOWTO: Change the Controls in a Common Dialog Box

• Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK)
• Microsoft Win32 Software Development Kit (SDK), on platform(s):
  • Microsoft Windows NT, versions 3.1, 3.5, 3.51

SUMMARY

One reason to incorporate the common dialogs library routines into an application is the ability to use the basic functionality of one or more of the common dialogs and tailor it to the needs of a particular application.

All of the predefined controls must be present for the Common Dialogs DLL (COMMDLG.DLL) to properly interact with a dialog box. Each predefined control in the dialog box must retain its control ID value. For these reasons, an application cannot delete unnecessary controls from a dialog box.

To prevent the user from interacting with a given control, move the control off screen by specifying very large coordinate values [for example, (4000, 4000)]. The application must also disable the control to prevent it from receiving the focus when the user uses the TAB key to cycle through the controls. Failing to disable the control can create "mystery" tab stops where the input focus disappears.

Keywords          : kbCmnDlg kbNTOS310 kbNTOS350 kbNTOS351 kbGrpUser kbWinOS310 
Version           : 
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Issue type        : kbhowto 

Last Reviewed: March 7, 1999