You set the text of any part of a status bar by sending the SB_SETTEXT message, specifying the zero-based index of a part, an address of the string to draw in the part, and the technique for drawing the string. The drawing technique determines whether the text has a border and, if it does, the style of the border. It also determines whether the parent window is responsible for drawing the text.
By default, text is left-aligned within the specified part of a status bar. You can embed tab characters, such as, \ t, in the text to center it or right-align it. Text to the right of a single tab character is centered, and text to the right of a second tab character is right-aligned.
To retrieve text from a status bar, use the SB_GETTEXTLENGTH and SB_GETTEXT messages.
If your application uses a status bar that has only one part, you can perform text operations by using the WM_SETTEXT, WM_GETTEXT, and WM_GETTEXTLENGTH messages. These messages deal only with the part that has an index of zero, enabling you to treat the status bar much like a static text control.
To display a line of status information without creating a status bar, use the DrawStatusText function. The function uses the same techniques to draw the status information as it uses to draw the window procedure for the status bar, but it does not automatically set the size and position of the status information. When calling the DrawStatusText function, you must specify the size and position of the status information as well as the device context of the window in which to draw it.