Get Text for a Control

cats8199

I am trying to get the text from a control in another process. I know the handle for the control and I know the afx class name. It is as follows: Class Name : Afx:400000:20 This control is part of a chatbox in an external application. I have tried several different things but I have so far failed to get the text from it. Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Dave

David Crow

cats8199 wrote: I have tried several different things... Such as?

"One must learn from the bite of the fire to leave it alone." - Native American Proverb

Andy Moore

Send the WM_GETTEXT message to that control. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements. -- Peter Gibbons

cats8199

I have tried sending the messages EM_GETLINECOUNT and WM_GETTEXT. Both return zero. This is a multiline text box. I have tried treating it as a CListBox, a CComboBox and a CListCtrl. All to no avail. Dave

cats8199

I have tried sending the messages EM_GETLINECOUNT and WM_GETTEXT. Both return zero. This is a multiline text box. I have tried treating it as a CListBox, a CComboBox and a CListCtrl. All to no avail. Dave

David Crow

cats8199 wrote: This is a multiline text box. I have tried treating it as a CListBox, a CComboBox and a CListCtrl. All to no avail. It's no surprise! Why haven't you tried CEdit instead? That, however, is not the problem here. If neither EM_GETLINECOUNT nor WM_GETTEXT worked, using an MFC class is just added complexity.

"One must learn from the bite of the fire to leave it alone." - Native American Proverb

PJ Arends

Check out this article, it has code that does what you want.http://www.codeproject.com/tools/WindowScraper_Utility.asp[^] If you tried sending a WM_SETTEXT message to the window and it doesn't work, it could because the authors of the control did not implement a WM_SETTEXT handler. I see this error quite often in custom controls. What a lot of people seem to do is override the GetWindowText() function, instead of adding a WM_GETTEXT message handler.

"You're obviously a superstar." - Christian Graus about me - 12 Feb '03 "Obviously ??? You're definitely a superstar!!!" - mYkel - 21 Jun '04 "There's not enough blatant self-congratulatory backslapping in the world today..." - HumblePie - 21 Jun '05 Within you lies the power for good - Use it!