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Enable Auto-complete on Your Edit Controls in VC++

You may have noticed the auto completion feature in the edit controls in Microsoft's file dialog boxes. You enter a few letters/words of the file path/file name, the edit control provides a dropdown list box with suggestions for your string.

The API that performs this trick for you is SHAutoComplete(HWND hEdit, DWORD flags);. hEdit is the handle to the edit control window. It flags a value or combination of values that controls the behaviour of the autocomplete feature.

Here's an example:

#include <shlwapi.h> 
#include <ole2.h>
#pragma comment (lib, "shlwapi.lib")

LRESULT CALLBACK MyDialogProc (HWND hWnd, UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam)
{
switch (uMsg)
{
case WM_INITDIALOG:
    HWND hFilePath;
    
    CoInitialize (NULL);
    hFilePath = GetDlgItem (hWnd, ID_FILEPATH);
    SHAutoComplete (hFilePath, SHACF_DEFAULT);
    break;

case WM_DESTROY:
    CoUninitialize();
    PostQuitMessage (0);
    break;
}
}