How to display tooltips for a toolbar in a dialog

It is relatively easy to place a toolbar in a dialog box, but I had a hard time making the tooltips appear since none of the TTN_xxxx message handlers are present in a CDialog derived class. This article describes a simple technique for getting tooltips when you have a toolbar in a dialog. It also gives a brief overview of the steps involved in adding a toolbar to a dialog box.

Step 1

In the dialog's header file you must add a CToolBar instance and an entry in the message map to handle the tooltip messages.

protected:
    CToolBar cToolBar;

at the bottom of the wizard generated message map entries add:

//}}AFX_MSG
afx_msg BOOL OnToolTipText(UINT nID, NMHDR* pNMHDR, LRESULT* pResult);
DECLARE_MESSAGE_MAP()

Step 2

In dialog's implementation file add the following to the end of OnInitDialog to show the toolbar.

//add the tool bar to the dialog
cToolBar.Create(this);
cToolBar.LoadToolBar(IDR_TOOLBAR);
cToolBar.ShowWindow(SW_SHOW);
cToolBar.SetBarStyle(CBRS_ALIGN_TOP | CBRS_TOOLTIPS | CBRS_FLYBY);
RepositionBars(AFX_IDW_CONTROLBAR_FIRST, AFX_IDW_CONTROLBAR_LAST, 0);

At the bottom of the message map add the following:

ON_NOTIFY_EX_RANGE(TTN_NEEDTEXTW, 0, 0xFFFF, OnToolTipText)
ON_NOTIFY_EX_RANGE(TTN_NEEDTEXTA, 0, 0xFFFF, OnToolTipText)
END_MESSAGE_MAP()

Finally add the message handler method as entered in the message map:

BOOL CToolBarTipTestDialog::OnToolTipText(UINT, NMHDR* pNMHDR, LRESULT* pResult)
{
    ASSERT(pNMHDR->code == TTN_NEEDTEXTA || pNMHDR->code == TTN_NEEDTEXTW);

    // if there is a top level routing frame then let it handle the message
    if (GetRoutingFrame() != NULL) return FALSE;

    // to be thorough we will need to handle UNICODE versions of the message also !!
    TOOLTIPTEXTA* pTTTA = (TOOLTIPTEXTA*)pNMHDR;
    TOOLTIPTEXTW* pTTTW = (TOOLTIPTEXTW*)pNMHDR;
    TCHAR szFullText[512];
    CString strTipText;
    UINT nID = pNMHDR->idFrom;

    if (pNMHDR->code == TTN_NEEDTEXTA && (pTTTA->uFlags & TTF_IDISHWND) ||
        pNMHDR->code == TTN_NEEDTEXTW && (pTTTW->uFlags & TTF_IDISHWND))
    {
        // idFrom is actually the HWND of the tool 
        nID = ::GetDlgCtrlID((HWND)nID);
    }

    if (nID != 0) // will be zero on a separator
    {
        AfxLoadString(nID, szFullText);
        strTipText=szFullText;

#ifndef _UNICODE
        if (pNMHDR->code == TTN_NEEDTEXTA)
        {
            lstrcpyn(pTTTA->szText, strTipText, sizeof(pTTTA->szText));
        }
        else
        {
            _mbstowcsz(pTTTW->szText, strTipText, sizeof(pTTTW->szText));
        }
#else
        if (pNMHDR->code == TTN_NEEDTEXTA)
        {
            _wcstombsz(pTTTA->szText, strTipText,sizeof(pTTTA->szText));
        }
        else
        {
            lstrcpyn(pTTTW->szText, strTipText, sizeof(pTTTW->szText));
        }
#endif

        *pResult = 0;

        // bring the tooltip window above other popup windows
        ::SetWindowPos(pNMHDR->hwndFrom, HWND_TOP, 0, 0, 0, 0,
            SWP_NOACTIVATE|SWP_NOSIZE|SWP_NOMOVE|SWP_NOOWNERZORDER);
        
        return TRUE;
    }

    return FALSE;
}