In MS Access VBA, I have been trying to programmatically insert code into a form's richtext textbox control when the user presses a button. The idea is to put a mark where the user's cursor is at the time the user presses the button--the mark will signify the start of text where the user enters a comment about the text.

However, presumably because the richtext textbox has hidden formatting codes embedded (e.g., <div>, etc.), using .SelStart and .SelLength does not seem to get me to the correct position in the textbox when I am trying to insert the new text. It is consistently inserting the text earlier in the textbox than where the cursor was when the button is clicked, but not a consistent number of characters earlier.

Although I've done a search and found some wonderful functions for inserting text into a standard textbox (e.g., Lebans' InsertAtCursor function), I cannot get those functions to work for richtext textboxes either--that is, they have the same problem as code that I wrote myself; it inserts the new text too early in the existing textbox text.

Anyone have a solution for programmatically inserting new text into a richtext textbox at the cursor position?

Here is code (obviously, I could make the code more efficient, but I was just trying to get something working first) from one of my attempts. It inserts text, but, not at the correct location, presumably due to the richtext formatting that does not visibly appear in the textbox but apparently influences .SelStart position values:

Dim intSelStart As Integer  'this is the starting location of the selection in the note at the time the comment was initially added
Dim strAddComment as String  'this is the string comment that I want to add--it is not the comment itself, it is a flag that will indicate the comment number

strAddComment = "|1`17|"  'the | characters delimit the comment flag; the first number is the comment number so 1 is the first comment, 2 is the second, etc.; the value after the ` is the length of the text selected in the textbox to which the comment applies, e.g., `17 means the comment applies to 17 selected characters

Forms!frmAppt_individual.SetFocus  'set the focus to the main form
Forms!frmAppt_individual.sub_C.SetFocus  'set the focus to the subform so we can get the .Sel property values of the text selected in the textbox on the subform
Forms!frmAppt_individual.sub_C.Form.Controls("Note").SetFocus  'set focus on the control which is required to get the .Sel property values
intSelStart = Forms!frmAppt_individual.sub_C.Form.Controls("Note").SelStart

'now try to insert the comment
Forms!frmAppt_individual.sub_C.Form.Controls("Note") = Left(Forms!frmAppt_individual.sub_C.Form.Controls("Note"), intSelStart) & strAddComment & Mid(Forms!frmAppt_individual.sub_C.Form.Controls("Note"), intSelStart   1)

CodePudding user response：

So, I am posting code below that worked for me to insert text at the current insertion point into a richtext textbox using VBA code. The use of the PlainText function seemed helpful. Hopefully the code below will help someone else trying to do the same thing.

An explanation of the code: The function fAddComment is contained in a standard module. fAddComment is called when the user clicks a button btnAddComment on the parent form frmAppt. A subform subNoteForm contains the richtext textbox named tbxNote. The user is expected to have the insertion point at the position in the richtext textbox where the comment reference is inserted; the user may also have a number of characters selected that indicate the range of text to which the comment reference applies. The function fAddComment will determine what comment number the new comment reference will be by counting any existing comment references already in the note. The function will also count the number of characters selected when the comment reference is inserted so that a different function can later locate the comment reference and select the relevant characters. The function adds, at the insertion point, a comment emoji (