Getting screen coordinates from Range

[ektimo]

Hi,

I'm trying to get the screen location of a Range object. Currently
I'm doing (C++):

CRange range = application.get_ActiveCell();
int rangeLeft = int(range.get_Left().dblVal / 0.75 ) + 25;
int rangeTop = int(range.get_Top().dblVal / 0.75) + 16;
pWnd->ClientToScreen(&ptForBalloon);

But this obviously has some problems (doesn't handle zooming,
multiple panes, etc).

I found some nice code by keepITcool that handles most of this:
http://groups.google.com.au/group/m...ogramming/browse_frm/thread/4989aac2dde2e778/

But it still doesn't handle Panes.

Anyone know a full solution?

Some other questions:
1) PointsToScreenPixelsX doesn't show up in my VS generated C++
wrappers. Any idea how to deal with this?
2) What I *really* want is to be able to select/get the location of
some text within a cell, not the cell itself. Is this possible?

[The reason I want to do this is to support Excel in my HandyFind
freeware that lets you Find as You Type and displays a balloon to guide
your eye to the found text. I put a preview including Excel support at
http://www.handykeys.com/preview in case you are interested. Any
feedback is much appreciated. Please send it to the email address on
that page.]

Thanks!
-Edwin Evans

 

[Peter T]

Hi Edwin,

I found some nice code by keepITcool that handles most of this:
But it still doesn't handle Panes.

I remember that and very nice too. From memory to cater for Panes need to
get the distances from the top & left of the window (incl window border &
header dimensions) to the top-left cell in the active pane. Then add to the
coordinates returned by KeepITcool's routine. Existing code can be easily
adapted to do most of that except getting the window border dimensions.

1) PointsToScreenPixelsX doesn't show up in my VS generated C++
wrappers.

This is a VBA function, not an API, that works with a Window object.

2) What I *really* want is to be able to select/get the location of
some text within a cell, not the cell itself. Is this possible?

Difficult to do this accurately particularly with a proportional font.
Although relatively rare individual characters could be individually font
formatted (size/bold etc). Doable and I've done it but a lot of work that
involves placing text into a column elsewhere, autosizing and returning the
new dimension.

For your baloon could use one of the autoshapes and position directly over
the cell.

Regards,
Peter T

Hi,

I'm trying to get the screen location of a Range object. Currently
I'm doing (C++):

CRange range = application.get_ActiveCell();
int rangeLeft = int(range.get_Left().dblVal / 0.75 ) + 25;
int rangeTop = int(range.get_Top().dblVal / 0.75) + 16;
pWnd->ClientToScreen(&ptForBalloon);

But this obviously has some problems (doesn't handle zooming,
multiple panes, etc).

I found some nice code by keepITcool that handles most of this:
http://groups.google.com.au/group/microsoft.public.excel.programming/browse_
frm/thread/4989aac2dde2e778/

But it still doesn't handle Panes.

Anyone know a full solution?

Some other questions:
1) PointsToScreenPixelsX doesn't show up in my VS generated C++
wrappers. Any idea how to deal with this?
2) What I *really* want is to be able to select/get the location of
some text within a cell, not the cell itself. Is this possible?

[The reason I want to do this is to support Excel in my HandyFind
freeware that lets you Find as You Type and displays a balloon to guide
your eye to the found text. I put a preview including Excel support at
http://www.handykeys.com/preview in case you are interested. Any
feedback is much appreciated. Please send it to the email address on
that page.]

Thanks!
-Edwin Evans

 

[Ed]

Hi Edwin,


I remember that and very nice too. From memory to cater for Panes need to
get the distances from the top & left of the window (incl window border &
header dimensions) to the top-left cell in the active pane. Then add to the
coordinates returned by KeepITcool's routine. Existing code can be easily
adapted to do most of that except getting the window border dimensions.

How do I get the distance to the pane? I don't see any methods on
Pane that would help me do this. The only one that looks like it might
help is VisibleRange, but the locations I get back from the returned
Range are relative to the pane. Am I missing something?

The only other way I can think to get the pane offset is to look for
the little splitter subwindows (window class XLCTL). I think this
should work -- for the versions of Excel I've looked at least -- but
it sure isn't nice.

This is a VBA function, not an API, that works with a Window object.

Actually, I figured out how to do this one. I know it isn't a windows
API. I'm using the COM interfaces that Excel exposes (since I needed a
small program that interacts with various programs on the fly). For
what it's worth, this is what I needed, which I found using
OleView.Exe:

long PointsToScreenPixelsX(long Points)
{
long result;
static BYTE parms[] = VTS_I4;
InvokeHelper(0x6f0, DISPATCH_METHOD, VT_I4, (void*)&result, parms,
Points);
return result;
}

I updated my preview (http://handykeys.com/preview) now that scrolling
and zooming is working.

Difficult to do this accurately particularly with a proportional font.
Although relatively rare individual characters could be individually font
formatted (size/bold etc). Doable and I've done it but a lot of work that
involves placing text into a column elsewhere, autosizing and returning the
new dimension.

Interesting. Indeed, it sounds like a lot of work though and I'd hate
to do anything that ended up modifying the user's spreadsheet if
something went wrong. I may have to live with just selecting the Cell,
for now. I'm surprised Microsoft can live with this in their user
interface! Wouldn't it be better to highlight the location of the
found text? Perhaps they didn't want Find Next to ever stay in the
same cell, but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to
highlight all the occurrences.

-Edwin Evans
Creator of HandyFind freeware (http://handykeys.com) -- Find as you
Type in Notepad, Internet Explorer, Microsft Word, and more.