Several steps are required to create an accelerator table for an application. First, a resource compiler is used to create accelerator-table resources and to add them to the application's executable file. At run time, the LoadAccelerators function is used to load the accelerator table into memory and retrieve the handle to the accelerator table. This handle is passed to the TranslateAccelerator function to activate the accelerator table.
An accelerator table can also be created for an application at run time by passing an array of ACCEL structures to the CreateAcceleratorTable function. This method supports user-defined accelerators in the application. Like the LoadAccelerators function, CreateAcceleratorTable returns an accelerator-table handle that can be passed to TranslateAccelerator to activate the accelerator table.
The system automatically destroys accelerator tables loaded by LoadAccelerators. An accelerator table created by CreateAcceleratorTable must be destroyed before an application closes; otherwise, the table continues to exist in memory after the application has closed. An accelerator table is destroyed by calling the DestroyAcceleratorTable function.
An existing accelerator table can be copied and modified. The existing accelerator table is copied by using the CopyAcceleratorTable function. After the copy is modified, a handle to the new accelerator table is retrieved by calling CreateAcceleratorTable. Finally, the handle is passed to TranslateAccelerator to activate the new table.