HOWTO: Determine the New Month Selected in Calendar Control

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

SUMMARY

The Microsoft Calendar Control provides NewMonth and NewYear events. These events occur when the user selects a different month or year in the Calendar. However, the events do not indicate which month or year was selected. This article demonstrates how you can determine which month or year was selected.

MORE INFORMATION

The Microsoft Calendar control does not ship with Visual Basic. The control ships as part of Microsoft Access or may be downloaded for free from the following URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/officedev/freestuff/mscaldl.htm

Step-by-Step Example

1. Start Visual Basic and create a new Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.



2. On the Project menu, click Components, and then check the "Microsoft Calendar Control 8.0" component. The Calendar control is made available on the Toolbox.



3. Put a Calendar control on Form1.



4. Copy and paste the following code to the form's code window:

   
         Option Explicit
         Private Declare Function FindWindowEx Lib "user32" _
            Alias "FindWindowExA" _
            (ByVal hWnd1 As Long, _
            ByVal hWnd2 As Long, _
            ByVal lpsz1 As String, _
            ByVal lpsz2 As String) As Long
   
         Private Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32" _
            Alias "SendMessageA" _
            (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
            ByVal wMsg As Long, _
            ByVal wParam As Long, _
            lParam As Any) As Long
   
         Private Const CB_GETCURSEL = &H147
         Private Const CB_GETLBTEXT = &H148
         Private calendarHwnd As Long
         Private cboMonthHwnd As Long
         Private cboYearHwnd As Long
   
         Private Sub Form_Load()
            calendarHwnd = FindWindowEx(Me.hwnd, 0&, "CalendarWndClass", _
               vbNullString)
            cboMonthHwnd = FindWindowEx(calendarHwnd, 0&, "ComboBox", _
               vbNullString)
          cboYearHwnd = FindWindowEx(calendarHwnd, cboMonthHwnd, "ComboBox", _
               vbNullString)
         End Sub
   
         Private Sub Calendar1_NewMonth()
            Dim monthIndex As Long, temp As Long
            Dim ret As String * 255
            ret = Space(255)
            ' Find 0-based index of the selected item:
            monthIndex = SendMessage(cboMonthHwnd, CB_GETCURSEL, 0&, 0&)
            ' Put month name in ret and length of month name in temp:
            temp = SendMessage(cboMonthHwnd, CB_GETLBTEXT, monthIndex, _
                ByVal ret)
            ' uncomment the line below to see if the ComboBox was used:
            'If Calendar1.Month = 0 Then Debug.Print "ComboBox used to
            'select";
            Debug.Print Left(ret, temp) 'Displays Month Name
         End Sub
   
         Private Sub Calendar1_NewYear()
            Dim yearIndex As Long, temp As Long
            Dim ret As String * 255
            ret = Space(255)
            ' Find 0-based index of the selected item:
            yearIndex = SendMessage(cboYearHwnd, CB_GETCURSEL, 0&, 0&)
            ' Put year value in ret and length of year value in temp:
            temp = SendMessage(cboYearHwnd, CB_GETLBTEXT, yearIndex, _
                ByVal ret)
            ' uncomment the line below to see if the ComboBox was used:
            'If Calendar1.Year = 0 Then Debug.Print "ComboBox used to
            'select ";
            Debug.Print Left(ret, temp) 'Displays Year
         End Sub 




5. Press the CTRL+G key combination to view the Immediate Window.



6. Press the F5 key to run the project.



7. Choose a month from the first combo box. Note the Immediate Window displays the month name selected.



8. Choose a year from the second combo box. Note the Immediate Window displays the year selected.

REFERENCES

For information on how to distribute the Calendar control with your application, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q178359 : PRB: Distribution of MSCAL Control in Visual Basic Application

Additional query words: kbVBp kbVBp500 kbVBp600 kbCtrl kbVBp kbdsd kbDSupport

Keywords : kbGrpVB
Version : WINDOWS:5.0,6.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto