Selecting Controls

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To size, align, move, copy, or delete controls, you select them and then perform the operation you want. In most cases, you need to select more than one control to use the sizing and alignment tools on the Dialog toolbar.

When a control is selected, it has a shaded border around it with solid (active) or hollow (inactive) “sizing handles,” small squares that appear in the selection border. When multiple controls are selected, the dominant control has solid sizing handles; all the other selected controls have hollow sizing handles.

When you are sizing or aligning multiple controls, the Dialog editor uses the “dominant control” to determine how the other controls are sized or aligned. By default, the dominant control is the last control selected, but you can change it.

What do you want to do?

Select multiple controls

Change the dominant control when more than one control is selected

To select multiple controls

  1. On the Controls toolbar, select the Pointer tool.

  2. Drag the pointer to draw a selection box around the controls you want to select. Controls partially outside the selection box are not selected.

    When you release the mouse button, all controls inside the selection box are selected.

    Once you have selected one or more controls, you can remove or add individual controls without disturbing the selection as a whole.

  3. Hold down the SHIFT key and click the control you want to remove from or add to the existing selection.

To change the dominant control when more than one control is selected