HOWTO: Right Justify the Help Menu Item in Visual Basic

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

SUMMARY

Many applications (especially older, 16-bit programs) have the Help menu item right-justified on the menu bar. That is, "Help" appears all the way to the right instead of the left, grouped with the other top level menu items. The Visual Basic Menu Editor does not supply this functionality, but it is fairly easy to implement this feature with a few WIN32 API calls, as demonstrated in this example.

NOTE: The use of a right-justified Help menu in an application is not the recommended style for creating Windows applications. This article provides this information without recommending its use.

MORE INFORMATION

Step-by-Step Example

1. Open a new Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.



2. On the Tools menu, click Menu Editor. Create a menu with "Help" as the last top level menu item.



3. Add the following code to the General Declarations section of Form1:
   
   

   
   Option Explicit
   
   Private Type MENUITEMINFO
      cbSize As Long
      fMask As Long
      fType As Long
      fState As Long
      wID As Long
      hSubMenu As Long
      hbmpChecked As Long
      hbmpUnchecked As Long
      dwItemData As Long
      dwTypeData As String
      cch As Long
   End Type
   
   Private Const MF_STRING = &H0&
   Private Const MF_HELP = &H4000&
   Private Const MFS_DEFAULT = &H1000&
   
   Private Const MIIM_ID = &H2
   Private Const MIIM_SUBMENU = &H4
   Private Const MIIM_TYPE = &H10
   Private Const MIIM_DATA = &H20
   
   Private Declare Function GetMenu Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long) As Long
   
   Private Declare Function GetMenuItemInfo Lib "user32" _
      Alias "GetMenuItemInfoA" _
      (ByVal hMenu As Long, ByVal un As Long, ByVal B As Boolean, _
      lpMenuItemInfo As MENUITEMINFO) As Long
    
   Private Declare Function SetMenuItemInfo Lib "user32" _
      Alias "SetMenuItemInfoA" _
      (ByVal hMenu As Long, ByVal un As Long, ByVal bool As Boolean, _
      lpcMenuItemInfo As MENUITEMINFO) As Long
   
   Private Declare Function DrawMenuBar Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long) _
      As Long
   
   Private Sub Form_Load()
      Dim mnuItemInfo As MENUITEMINFO, hMenu As Long
      Dim BuffStr As String * 80   ' Define as largest possible menu text.
   
      hMenu = GetMenu(Me.hwnd)   ' Retrieve the menu handle.
      BuffStr = Space(80)
      With mnuItemInfo   ' Initialize UDT
            .cbSize = Len(mnuItemInfo)   ' 44
            .dwTypeData = BuffStr & Chr(0)
            .fType = MF_STRING
            .cch = Len(mnuItemInfo.dwTypeData)   ' 80
            .fState = MFS_DEFAULT
            .fMask = MIIM_ID Or MIIM_DATA Or MIIM_TYPE Or MIIM_SUBMENU
      End With
      ' Use the desired item's position for the '3' below (zero-based list).
      If GetMenuItemInfo(hMenu, 3, True, mnuItemInfo) = 0 Then
         MsgBox "GetMenuItemInfo failed. Error: " & Err.LastDllError, , _
                "Error"
      Else
         mnuItemInfo.fType = mnuItemInfo.fType Or MF_HELP
         If SetMenuItemInfo(hMenu, 3, True, mnuItemInfo) = 0 Then
            MsgBox "SetMenuItemInfo failed. Error: " & Err.LastDllError, , _
                   "Error"
         End If
      End If
      DrawMenuBar (Me.hwnd)   ' Repaint top level Menu
   End Sub 




4. Run the project. Notice that "Help" is right-justified at the far right-side of the menu bar and is completely functional.

REFERENCES

For additional information about manipulation menus in Visual Basic, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q216185 HOWTO: Create Multi-Column Menus in Visual Basic Using the WIN32 API

(c) Microsoft Corporation 1999, All Rights Reserved. Contributions by Chris E. Jolley, Microsoft Corporation.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbAPI kbMenu kbGrpUser kbVBp kbVBp500 kbVBp600 kbGrpVB
Version : WINDOWS:5.0,6.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto