Tooltips For Tree Control Items

Changing the tool tip as the mouse pointer moves along different tree control items is fairly simple. The tree control can be on a dialog, property page or a form view.
Assuming that you use a class derived from CFormView called CMyFormView, which has a tree control, the steps to follow are:


  1. Declare a member variable for the tree control (IDC_TREE1), m_tree.
  2. Decide on how the tip for each tree item will be stored. For instance, you could hold the tip in a map which you declare in the header file CMyFormView.h.

    	CMap< HTREEITEM,HTREEITEM&,CString,CString& > tooltipMap;

  3. Fill the map as you generate the items of the tree. For instance after every InsertItem:
    	HTREEITEM hItem = m_tree.InsertItem(&tvItem); // tvItem is of type TV_INSERTSTRUCT
    tooltipMap[hItem] = ” Tool Tip Text “; // Set the tool tip text of the item.

  4. Declare an object of CToolTipCtrl in the header file CMyFormView .h
    	CToolTipCtrl m_tooltip;

  5. Create the tool tip control and initialize it in the OnInitialUpdate message handler (OnInitDialog for CDialog derived classes)
    	m_tooltip.Create(this);
    m_tooltip.Activate(TRUE);
    m_tooltip.AddTool(GetDlgItem(IDC_TREE1), “Tree Tool Tip”);

  6. Override the PreTranslateMessage in the form view.
    	BOOL CMyFormView::PreTranslateMessage(MSG* pMsg)
    {
    // TODO: Add your specialized code here and/or call the base class
    if(pMsg->message == WM_MOUSEMOVE && pMsg->hwnd == m_tree.m_hWnd)
    {
    CPoint point(LOWORD(pMsg->lParam),HIWORD(pMsg->lParam));
    HTREEITEM hItem = m_tree.HitTest(point);
    if(hItem != NULL)
    {
    CString text = tooltipMap[hItem];
    m_tooltip.UpdateTipText(text,&m_tree);
    m_tooltip.RelayEvent(pMsg);
    }

    }
    }


    This changes the tool tip text as the mouse pointer moves along the different items in the tree control.

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