Prevent picturebox clicks from stealing focus

[Punchinello]

If I use a picture box as a container for user controls and click the mouse in an empty region of the picture box, focus leaves the active control and goes - I assume - to the picture box itself. Can anyone suggest a way to make the picture box ignore mouse clicks?

 

[Golom]

Set the "Enabled" property to False?

 

[Punchinello]

Golom,
setting Enabled to false prevents access to the child controls. Thanks for the reply but that won't work.

 

[JBlair]

Maybe have the control you wish to keep the focus on have the subroutine LostFocus set the focus on it once more.

Private Sub Form_LostFocus()
Me.SetFocus()
End Sub

 

[Punchinello]

JBlair,

I've actually developed routines on one form that uses the GotFocus event on each user control to set the tag property of its PictureBox parent like so:

Private Function NewFocus
Dim Ctrl As Control
  Set Ctrl = Me.ActiveControl
  MyPictureBox.Tag = Ctrl.Name
End Function

Private Sub MyControl_GotFocus()
  NewFocus
End Sub

The effect of the code above is simply to store the name of the last user control that was active. Then on the PictureBox's GotFocus event, I implement code like in your suggestion to return the focus to the "last active" control:

Private Sub MyPictureBox_GotFocus()
On Error Resume Next
  Me.Controls(MyPictureBox.Tag).SetFocus
End Sub

This code works fine. What I was hoping for was the suggestion of an API call or some code that I can apply to the PictureBox all by itself without having to fuss with every other control's GotFocus event. In Delphi, for example, I can trap an event like MouseDown and silently abort it with a command called (not surprisingly) Abort.

 

[JBlair]

I know very little about API's but perhaps you can find something by browsing the lists of the API viewer?