Detect the Cursor Position within an Edit Control

Category:

System/API

Type:

Snippets

Difficulty:

Beginning

Author:

John

Version Compatibility: Visual Basic 5

More information:

Add one Edit Control (Text Box or RichTextBox Control) and paste the following code into your VB Project.

Instructions: Copy the declarations and code below and paste directly into your VB project.

Declarations:
Option Explicit Private Type POINTAPI X As Long Y As Long End Type Private Declare Function GetCaretPos Lib _ "user32" (lpPoint As POINTAPI) As Long

Code:

'CHANGE NAME OF EDIT CONTROL IF NECESSARY
Private Sub Text1_KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer)

'=================================
    'This example grabs the current X and Y of a Text Cursor 
    'Position within a Text Box Control (works equally well in a 
    'Rich Text Box) and prints the Cursor's X & Y position in 
    'the Form's Title Bar
    'The Unit of Measure returned is Pixels
    'The Co-ordinates returned are from the Top and Left of the 
    'text box or RTF
    'Control's absolute position - so don't forget to add/remove 
     'the control's .left and .top co-ordinates if required.
    'If you require the Text Cursor's X and Y position in a 
    'different control (as in a Find and Replace' example, where
    'a text box contains the search criteria, but you
    'require the Cursor's position in the main Text's control), 
     'set the focus to the desired control before calling the 
    'GetTCurs...
    'i.e. insert the following
    'RichTextBox1.SetFocus
    '=================================
    Dim XPos As Long
    Dim YPos As Long
    
    XPos = GetTCursX
    YPos = GetTCursY
    '=================================
    'However, as vbTwips are the default unit of measure, you 
    'can obtain
    'the position in vbTwips using the following call
    'XPos = ScaleX(GetTCursX, vbPixels, vbTwips)
    'YPos = ScaleY(GetTCursY, vbPixels, vbTwips)
    '=================================
    Me.Caption = "X: " & XPos & " Y: " & YPos
    
End Sub

Public Function GetTCursX() As Long
    Dim pt As POINTAPI
    GetCaretPos pt
    GetTCursX = pt.X
End Function

Public Function GetTCursY() As Long
    Dim pt As POINTAPI
    GetCaretPos pt
    GetTCursY = pt.Y
End Function