Find and Replace Dialog Boxes

The Find dialog box lets the user specify a string to search for, as well as options to use when searching for text in a document. The Replace dialog box lets the user specify a string to search for and a replacement string, as well as options to control the operation.

You create and display a Find dialog box by initializing a FINDREPLACE structure and passing the structure to the FindText function. You create and display a Replace dialog box by initializing a FINDREPLACE structure and passing the structure to the ReplaceText function.

The following illustration shows a typical Find dialog box.

The following illustration shows a typical Replace dialog box.

Unlike other common dialog boxes, the Find and Replace dialog boxes are modeless. A modeless dialog box allows the user to switch between the dialog box and the window that created it. This is useful for letting the user search for a string, switch to the application window to work on the string, and switch back to the dialog box to search for another string without repeating the command needed to open the dialog box.

If the FindText or ReplaceText function successfully creates the dialog box, it returns the handle of the dialog box. You can use this handle to move and communicate with the dialog box. If the function cannot create the dialog box, it returns NULL. You can determine the cause of an error by calling the CommDlgExtendedError function to retrieve the extended error value.