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You need to catch the WM_CTLCOLOREDIT message and return the correct colour brush from it to colour the textbox background. If you create a brush (ie you don't return a system brush) then you need to also devise a way to destroy that brush otherwise you will end up with a rather large memory leak.

For more info on the WM_CTLCOLOREDIT message, check this url.

There are alot of examples on the board that deal with this type of thing.

For an example of WM_CTLCOLOREDIT, this will set the text color to blue, the bkgrnd color to dark grey. You must define a solid brush (hEditBrush) with the color 00C0C0C0h (the same as the text background) to have the background painted.

.ELSEIF uMsg==WM_CTLCOLOREDIT

	mov eax,wParam

	mov hdcEdit,eax ;   // handle of display context

	mov eax,lParam

	mov hwndEdit,eax ; // handle of edit control 

	invoke SetTextColor,hdcEdit,00FF8000h

	invoke SetBkColor,hdcEdit,00C0C0C0h

	mov eax,hEditBrush

	ret

PS: the WM_CTLCOLOR messages are all handled in this way

As it said above : You must define a solid brush (hEditBrush) with the color 00C0C0C0h (the same as the text background) to have the background painted.

WM_CTLCOLOREDIT is sent each time the control has to be painted, it is windows that sens these messages and you don't have to specify anything in order to enable them, they are always sent. WM_CTLCOLORBTN has to be an owner drawn button, it doesn't say that in the docs but I have never been able to get it working with an ordinary button, but then if I want cool buttons I usually go with owner drawn anyway. I have found that WM_CTLCOLORSTATIC changes the colors of group buttons, check boxes and radio buttons.

I don't really understand VB so I won't try to understand it. All you have to do is use variables for the colors and create the brush when you need it. You can put a .IF/.ELSE/.ENDIF block in the message processing and skipover it if you don't need it, say with a flag to determine whether or not to paint it or let Windows paint it. If you let Windows paint it the defaults will be used automatically.

You're welcome, BTW it's just Donkey, no Mr.

SetBkColor should take care of that for you. :)

Also, I do a SetText to the control in question in order to cause the WM_CTLCOLOREDIT to occur.

Is there a more generic or harmless way to force the WM_CTLCOLOREDIT to occur?

In other words, I am causing this color change to occur when a button is clicked.

Hutch,

I checked out InvalidateRect on the MSDN library. It requires that I know the rectangle coordinates just as using SetText requires that I know the existing text so as not to destroy it.

I'm looking for a way to cause the repaint without:

1) Storing or getting an existing state
2) Destroying any preexisting attibutes (except the colors)

Thanks,

Mike

Beautiful! It all works now!

Thanks to Donkey and Hutch!

msmith,

Where in Missouri are you?

I'm in St. Charles which makes us practically brothers!:alright: