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Q291007: INFO: All Submenu Items Cannot Be Invisible

Article: Q291007
Product(s): Microsoft Visual Basic for Windows
Version(s): 4.0,5.0,6.0
Operating System(s): 
Keyword(s): kbMenu kbVBp kbVBp400 kbVBp500 kbVBp600 kbGrpDSVB kbDSupport kbCodeSnippet
Last Modified: 23-MAR-2001

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The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0 
- Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0 
- Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition, 32-bit, for Windows, version 4.0 
- Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition, 16-bit, for Windows, version 4.0 
- Microsoft Visual Basic Standard Edition for Windows, version 4.0 
- Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition, 16-bit, for Windows, version 4.0 
- Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition, 32-bit, for Windows, version 4.0 
- Microsoft Visual Basic Learning Edition for Windows, versions 5.0, 6.0 
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SUMMARY
=======

All submenu items in a menu cannot be set to invisible at run time or design
time. At least one of the submenu items must remain visible at all times.

MORE INFORMATION
================

Visual Basic does not allow a top-level menu item with no submenu items to
display. Therefore, setting all submenu items to invisible rasies an error
message. If you attempt to deselect (uncheck) the Visible option for all
submenus in the Menu Editor, and then click OK to save the menu, you receive the
following error message:

  At least one submenu item must be visible.

Steps to Demonstrate Run-Time Behavior
--------------------------------------

1. Start a new Standard EXE project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by
  default.

2. On the Tools menu, click to select the Menu Editor. Create a menu on Form1
  with a top-level menu with the caption Top and name mnuTop.

3. Create two submenu items with captions Sub1 and Sub2, and names mnuSub1 and
  mnuSub2. Note that you create submenu items by pressing the RIGHT-ARROW
  button to indent one level.

4. Paste the following code into the General Declarations section of Form1:

  Option Explicit

  Private Sub Form_Load()
  mnuSub1.Visible = False
  mnuSub2.Visible = False
  End Sub

5. Press the F5 key to run the project, and note that you see the following
  error message:

  Runtime Error '387':
  'Visible' property can't be set on this control.

6. Click End to dismiss the error, and then comment out the line:

  mnuSub2.Visible = False

7. Press F5, and note that there is no error.

Note that making the top-level menu item invisible is fine. For example:

  mnuTop.Visible = False

Naturally, with the top-level menu item invisible, this effectively removes all
the submenu items as well. However, if you make the top-level item invisible, it
can still be displayed as a shortcut menu. Any submenu items made invisible do
not appear on the shortcut menu.

Additional query words:

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Keywords          : kbMenu kbVBp kbVBp400 kbVBp500 kbVBp600 kbGrpDSVB kbDSupport kbCodeSnippet 
Technology        : kbVBSearch kbAudDeveloper kbZNotKeyword6 kbZNotKeyword2 kbVB500Search kbVB600Search kbVBA500 kbVBA600 kbVB500 kbVB600 kbVB400Search kbVB400 kbVB16bitSearch
Version           : :4.0,5.0,6.0
Issue type        : kbinfo

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