PRB: Can't Set Picture Object Property from Add-In (141934)

SUMMARY

An object property accessed from an Add-In returns a Properties collection, not the object specified by the property. This gives you the ability to access individual properties of the object as Property objects. However, this means that you cannot set the object property to a new object.

In the case of a Font property, each of the individual properties of the Font object can be changed from an Add-In. However, in the case of a Picture property, each of the individual properties of the Picture object cannot be changed. Therefore, any object properties of type Picture cannot be set from an Add-In. For a form, this includes the Icon, MouseIcon, and Picture properties.

MORE INFORMATION

It is not possible to set a picture property from an Add-In as follows, where objFT is a FormTemplate object and VBInstance is the Application object passed to the Add-In:

   Set objFT = VBInstance.ActiveProject.ActiveForm
   Set objFT.Properties("Picture").Value = LoadPicture("MY.BMP")

The Value property in this case returns a Properties collection not a Picture object. You can use this Properties collection to examine and modify the properties of the object. The following code shows three different syntaxes for accessing the individual properties of a FormTemplate Picture property:

   Print objFT.Properties("Picture").Value("Handle").Value
   Print objFT.Properties("Picture")("Width")
   Print objFT.Properties!Picture!Height

The Picture object has Type, Handle, hPal, Height, and Width properties. It is not possible to set all of these properties because they are not all read/write properties. Therefore, you cannot construct a picture object by simply setting all of its properties, as you can a font object.