Visual Basic Reference

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SelLength, SelStart, SelText Properties

See Also    Example    Applies To

  • SelLength returns or sets the number of characters selected.

  • SelStart returns or sets the starting point of text selected; indicates the position of the insertion point if no text is selected.

  • SelText returns or sets the string containing the currently selected text; consists of a zero-length string ("") if no characters are selected.

These properties aren't available at design time.

Syntax

object**.SelLength** [**=**number]

object**.SelStart** [**=**index]

object**.SelText** [**=**value]

The SelLength, SelStart, and SelText property syntaxes have these parts:

Part Description
Object An object expression that evaluates to an object in the Applies To list.
Number A numeric expression specifying the number of characters selected. For SelLength and SelStart, the valid range of settings is 0 to text length the total number of characters in the edit area of a ComboBox or TextBox control.
Index A numeric expression specifying the starting point of the selected text, as described in Settings.
Value A string expression containing the selected text.

Remarks

Use these properties for tasks such as setting the insertion point, establishing an insertion range, selecting substrings in a control, or clearing text. Used in conjunction with the Clipboard object, these properties are useful for copy, cut, and paste operations.

When working with these properties:

  • Setting SelLength less than 0 causes a run-time error.

  • Setting SelStart greater than the text length sets the property to the existing text length; changing SelStart changes the selection to an insertion point and sets SelLength to 0.

  • Setting SelText to a new value sets SelLength to 0 and replaces the selected text with the new string.