HOWTO: Select All Text in a Field When It Gets the Focus

• Microsoft Visual Basic Standard, Professional and Enterprise Editions, for Windows, version 5.0

SUMMARY

Automatic highlighting is useful in data entry boxes where you want to give the user the option to overwrite the existing contents quickly by pressing any character key.

This article demonstrates how to select (highlight) all text in a text box automatically whenever the text box gets the focus. This example also applies to the ComboBox and Grid control and any other controls that implement the Text, SelStart, and SelLength properties.

MORE INFORMATION

Step-by-Step Example

1. Start Visual Basic, or, if it is already running, click New Project from the File menu.

2. Place two Text Boxes on the Form1 form with the default settings.

3. Copy and paste the following code to the Form1 Code Window:

         Private Sub Text1_GotFocus()
           Call SelectMe(Me.ActiveControl)
         End Sub
   
         Private Sub Text2_GotFocus()
           Call SelectMe(Me.ActiveControl)
         End Sub
   
         Private Sub SelectMe(This As TextBox)
           This.SelStart = 0
           This.SelLength = Len(This.Text)
         End Sub
   
   

4. Press the F5 key to run the project, or click Run Project from the Tools menu.

REFERENCES

Visual Basic On-Line Help: Text, SelLength, SelStart Properties

(c) Microsoft Corporation 1996, All Rights Reserved. Contributions by Ted Keith, Microsoft Corporation