Microsoft KB Archive/174213

= BUG: Blank Window Appears Instead of Help File Contents =

Article ID: 174213

Article Last Modified on 5/13/2003

-

APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition

-



This article was previously published under Q174213



SYMPTOMS
When you set the HelpCommand property of a Common Dialog control to cdlHelpContents and then use the ShowHelp method to display the contents of a Help file, Windows Help appears with a blank window. The contents of the Help file is not displayed. The same behavior is exhibited if you set the HelpCommand property to cdlHelpIndex to display the index of a Help file.



Workaround #1
To display the contents or index of your Help file with the ShowHelp method, first set the HelpCommand property of the Common Dialog control to the value &HB. This value corresponds to the HELP_FINDER constant 0x000b in WINUSER.H. When you use this constant, the Help window appears with the last active tab. For example, if the Index tab was selected when this window was last shown, then it will be the active tab when help is shown again: CommonDialog1.HelpFile = _ "C:\Program Files\DevStudio\VB\Samples\Samples.hlp" CommonDialog1.HelpCommand = &HB CommonDialog1.ShowHelp

Workaround #2
To display the Index tab of your Help file, regardless of which tab was active when the Help file was last shown, set the HelpCommand property of the Common Dialog control to cdlHelpPartialKey: CommonDialog1.HelpFile = _ "C:\Program Files\DevStudio\VB\Samples\Samples.hlp" CommonDialog1.HelpCommand = cdlHelpPartialKey CommonDialog1.ShowHelp



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this bug and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.



Steps to Reproduce Behavior
 Start a new project in Visual Basic. Click Components on the Project menu. Check "Microsoft Common Dialog 5.0" and click OK. Add a Common Dialog control to Form1.  Add the following code to the Form_Click event of Form1: CommonDialog1.HelpFile = _ "C:\Program Files\DevStudio\VB\Samples\Samples.hlp" CommonDialog1.HelpCommand = cdlHelpContents CommonDialog1.ShowHelp  Press the F5 key to run the application. Click the form and note that Windows Help appears but the Help file contents are not displayed.</li></ol>

Additional query words: cmdlg kbVBp500bug kbVBp600bug kbVBp kbdsd kbDSupport kbControl

Keywords: kbbug KB174213

-

[mailto:TECHNET@MICROSOFT.COM Send feedback to Microsoft]

© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.