VB Forum / Win API / May 2007

jw,

Thanks for your time.

I noticed that the Winspector utility doesn't list hidden windows. Entire
window branches are not shown until the tab containing it is selected. So the
window structure is more complex than immediately apparent.

I think the problem is with identifying the window whose wndproc contains
the code that responds to the tab change. Maybe it's not the tab control's
parent ??? I tried using the handle to the page window (#32770) without
success. I don't know enough about this stuff to make good judgements, enen
if my code syntax is correct.

I thnk I should do more experimenting and studying for now. I'll try your
suggestion and also the PostMessage option this weekend. If nothing else, the
part that uses WM_SetText to send the text directly to the edit windows
should speed things up. I can construct the code that identifies all the edit
windows and use a loop to populate them instead of tabbing to them using
SendKeys.

Thanks again for all your time.

Greg

Hi jw,

Problem finally solved. I needed TCM_SETCURFOCUS instead of TCM_SETCURSEL.
As you know, achieving this very simple result took days. So for the benefit
of others I post the solution. I don't know if it is specific to my situation
or will always work for the sysTabControl32 class. Hope this saves others a
lot of wasted time.

The code does two things:
1.  Enters text in the second text box in a dialog (class "Edit")
2.  Selects the 4th tab of a tab control (class "sysTabControl32")
3.  The controls "contained in" the tab control pages actually respond -
i.e. the ones "belonging" to the selected tab become visible and those
"belonging" to all other tabs become invisible. This was not achieved using
TCM_SETCURSEL.

I use quotes in point 3 above because these controls are actually child to
the dialog the same as the tab control itself - i.e. sibling to the tab
control. This is explained with a quote from Mr_Unreliable from
http://tinyurl.com/2gjfhn:

'Start quote
The notion of "pages" is just the way it appears, not the way it's
programmed.  When you click on a tab, then the controls associated
with that tab are displayed (i.e., made visible) and all the other
controls are hidden.  While it "looks like" a separate page is
being displayed, it is really just individual controls being turned
on-and-off in the tab click event handler.
'End quote

Code:-

*Note that the dialog must already be open. Opening it programmatically is
my next project.

Declare Function FindWindowX Lib "user32" Alias _
"FindWindowExA" (ByVal HWnd1 As Long, _
ByVal HWnd2 As Long, ByVal lpsz1 As String, _
lpsz2 As String) As Long

Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32" Alias _
"SendMessageA" (ByVal hWnd As Long, _
ByVal wMsg As Long, ByVal wParam As Long, _
lParam As Any) As Long

Const WM_SETTEXT = &HC
Const TCM_SETCURFOCUS = &H1330

Sub SetPrecond(hWnd As Long)
Dim h1 As Long, h2 As Long
Dim tc As Long, ec As Long

'hWnd is application window (ShellWindow) handle passed to this procedure
'Drill down to dialog window containing tab control and text box
h1 = FindWindowX(hWnd, ByVal 0, ByVal "MDIClient", ByVal vbNullString)
h2 = FindWindowX(h1, ByVal 0, ByVal "DocAppWindow", ByVal vbNullString)
h1 = FindWindowX(h2, ByVal 0, ByVal "WndAppWindow", ByVal vbNullString)
h2 = FindWindowX(h1, ByVal 0, ByVal "#32770", ByVal vbNullString)
'now get tab control handle (child to h2)
tc = FindWindowX(h2, ByVal 0, ByVal "sysTabControl32", ByVal vbNullString)
'now get first text box handle
h1 = FindWindowX(h2, ByVal 0, ByVal "Edit", ByVal vbNullString)
'now get second text box handle (target text box)
ec = FindWindowX(h2, h1, ByVal "Edit", ByVal vbNullString)
'now set desired text in text box
SendMessage ec, WM_SETTEXT, ByVal 0&, ByVal "1234"
'now select 4th tab of tab control
'(1st tab has index 0 so 4th tab has index 3)
SendMessage ByVal tc, ByVal TCM_SETCURFOCUS, ByVal 3&, ByVal 0&

End Sub

Kind regards,
Greg