KB131029 - How To Manipulate Embedded Objects in General Fields

Article ID: 131029

Article Last Modified on 7/1/2004

Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3.0 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 5.0 Standard Edition
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 Professional Edition

This article was previously published under Q131029

SUMMARY

If an OLE object is embedded (not linked) in a General field, you cannot control the object directly by using OLE automation. Instead, you must first place the object on a form.

MORE INFORMATION

You cannot use the CREATEOBJECT or GETOBJECT functions to create a reference to an embedded OLE object in a General field. However, the field can be manipulated if it is placed on a form. From a programming standpoint, if the form is never made visible, the operation on the object is transparent to the user.

Code Sample

The following example creates a table that has a General field, places a Microsoft Graph object in the first record, and then programatically adds a title to the chart.

   * Create the table with the embedded object:
   CREATE TABLE grphaut(olegraph g)
   APPEND BLANK
   APPEND GENERAL olegraph CLASS "MSGraph"   && Appends default MSGraph
                                             && Data.

   * Use OLE automation to change the appearance of the chart:
   frmDummy =CREATEOBJECT("form")
   frmDummy.ADDOBJECT("oleGraph","OleBoundControl")
   WITH frmDummy.oleGraph
      .Height = 300
      .Width = 500
      .ControlSource = "grphaut.olegraph"
      .HasTitle = .T.
      .ChartTitle.Caption = "The Spanish Inquisition"
      .Type=3   && Type = 3 produces a bar chart, 4 produces a line chart
   ENDWITH
   RELEASE frmDummy

The actual OLE automation commands depend on the type of object stored in the General field.

For more information on passing data to Microsoft Graph programatically, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

129533 How to Pass Data to Microsoft Graph Programmatically

Keywords: kbhowto kbinterop kbautomation kbcode KB131029