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

ID: Q161240

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Visual Basic Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0

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

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

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

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

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

As you move to each text box, the text is highlighted. If you begin typing, the text will be replaced with your new entry. To deselect the text after giving focus to the text box, you can single-click the text or press any of the TextBox navigation keys (Home, End, Arrow-Keys).

REFERENCES

Additional query words: highlight kbVBp600 kbVBp500 kbVBp kbdsd kbDSupport kbNoKeyWord

Keywords : kbGrpVB
Version :
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto