MFC how to automatically select all text in CEdit control

Question

I have a CMFCToolBarComboBoxButton on a CMFCToolBar. I want that whenever the CMFCToolBarComboBoxButton gets the focus its entire text will be selected.
What is the most elegant way to implement it?

Thanks a lot!
Adi Barda

Answer 1

Not sure what the most elegant way is, but I guess the most common way to do this is to make a derived class and override OnSetFocus (exact method name not checked), and call SetCurSel() on the contained edit control. WM_FOCUS is only send to the control and there is no notification message for it afaik, so you'll have not many options besides doing something that will make the control handle the event - be it reflect it to somewhere else, or just implement the behavior itself. (I guess theoretically there's all sorts of finicking one can do with intercepting messages, but that's certainly not the most elegant way...)

Answer 2

That should be the default behavior of the standard edit control. If it's not, something else is removing that behavior explicitly. Maybe you can find some flag you can set on the combobox button?

If not: subclass the edit control, handle the WM_GETDLGCODE message. Return a value ORed with DLGC_HASSETSEL. If the control has this flag set, then Windows will automatically select all text on focus.