The normal MFC way of enabling/disabling menu items during runtime is to implement the UPDATE_COMMAND_UI handler for the item. To do this, use the class wizard to add an UPDATE_COMMAND_UI message handler for the particular menu item that you want to handle: - On the "Message Maps" page, select the object id of the menu item that you want to control - select the UPDATE_COMMAND_UI in the Messages window. - Click on the "Add Function" button to add a handler for it. - Click on the "Edit Code" button to goto the code for the newly added handler. In the handler code, you can control whether the menu item is enabled or disabled as follows: - To enable the menu item, call pCmdUI->Enable( TRUE ); - To disable the menu item, call pCmdUI->Enable( FALSE );