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How can I get the mousewheel working in the VBA editing
window?
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Article contributed by Jonathan West
The short answer is "Because sometimes
Microsoft's right hand doesn't know what it's left hand is doing."
The longer version is that when
Microsoft first produced mice with wheels, they also invented a new kind of
message in Windows, called WM_MOUSEWHEEL, which software developers could use to
detect movements of the mouse wheel. Microsoft's Intellipoint mouse driver
software generates these messages. But of course, in those early days, no
software knew what to do with WM_MOUSEWHEEL messages, so Microsoft had the early
versions of Intellipoint also generate WM_SCROLL messages, which were already
defined, and which would result in windows being scrolled. But current versions
of Intellipoint don't do this any more.
I believe that the idea was that
software companies would be told about this, and so would have time to sort out
their software and issue updates that knew how to cope with WM_MOUSEWHEEL
messages by the time Microsoft made the change. Unfortunately, they either
forgot to tell the people responsible for the VBA editor, or those responsible
never got round to making the necessary changes.
However there is a workaround, in the
form of utilities that detect WM_MOUSEWHEEL messages and generate the matching
WM_SCROLL messages.
I personally use VBScroll, a handy
little free utility that gets the mousewheel working in the VBA editor. It works
in the VBA editor for all the Office application (not just Word) and also in VB5
and VB6. You can download it from the following location.
http://www.gasanov.net/VBScroll.htm
Another Word MVP uses FreeWheel, which
does the same job, and can be downloaded from here.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/2060/freewheel.html |