Microsoft KB Archive/173552

Knowledge Base

HOWTO: Using Visual Basic to Access the Mail Control Panel GUI

Article ID: 173552

Article Last Modified on 6/28/2004

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APPLIES TO

• Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Enterprise Edition

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This article was previously published under Q173552

SUMMARY

For the sake of consistency, many developers like to provide the same configuration interfaces to their users as are provided in the Control Panel. These Control Panels are available for developers to call from their applications.

For Messaging related applications, the pertinent Control Panel applet is Mlcfg32.cpl. This article describes how to call this Control Panel applet from a Visual Basic Application.

MORE INFORMATION

1. Place the following code sample into a new Visual Basic Form:

         Dim strSysDirPath As String
         Dim vRetval As Double
   
         Private Sub Form_Load()
            'Setup the string to receive the name of the system directory
            strSysDirPath = String$(145, Chr$(0))
            strSysDirPath = Left$(strSysDirPath, _
                            GetSystemDirectory(strSysDirPath, _
                            Len(strSysDirPath)))
   
            'Run the Mail Control Panel
            vRetval = Shell(strSysDirPath & "\control.exe mlcfg32.cpl", 1)
   
            'Do the rest of your work here. Note: Most developers will
            'likely want to pause their application here until returning from
            'the Control Panel
            MsgBox vRetval
   
         End Sub
                       

2. Place the following declaration into a new Module:

         Declare Function GetSystemDirectory& Lib "kernel32" _
           Alias "GetSystemDirectoryA" (ByVal P$, ByVal S%)

Keywords: kbhowto kbcode KB173552

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