Iterate through controls

I have a VB 6.0 form containing a few labels and text boxes. I want to scroll through all these controls programatically and access the data inside (.text property). I also want the controls to be accessed in an order that I would specify at design time (say tab index order). I've tried the controls collection and the "for each item in collection" type loop ; but it gives me controls in an order for which I could not perceive any logic. Please let me know how to set this order. (Does anyone know what order the controls collection give by default ?)

Thanks in advance

I think it's the order in which you placed the controls on the form at designtime (not the taborder).

Crazy D @ Work :-)

It is not even that order. To start with, it may appear so (Reverse order of your control insertion); but after adding a few more controls the order is unpredictable. It appears to group all text boxes together ,all labels together etc.
But I could not find the exact logic.

Thanks for the reply.

The control list is a linked list with no useful order. If you only have a few, you can organize them by hand:

dim oaControls(5) as control
private Sub Form_Load()
set oaControls(0)=Label1
set oaControls(1)=Text1
set oaControls(2)=Label2
set oaControls(3)=Text2
set oaControls(4)=Label3
End Sub
...sometime later...
' text for Textbox and Label must be accessed with diff properties
for i=0 to 4
if typeof oaControls(i) is Label then
whatIwant = oaControls(i).Caption
else
whatIwant = oaControls(i).Text
end if
next




You might consider making the labels into Textboxes with input disabled, to make coding access easier. You can create them as a control array, such as Text1(0) through Text1(n). These are very easy to work with by indexing.

If you want to iterate through controls in accordance to their tab order it can easily be done as follows:

Sub GetControl (m_TabOrderNum as integer)
Dim objControl As Control
For Each objControl In Form1
If objControl.TabIndex = m_TabOrderNum Then
'do whatever, for example
objControl.SetFocus ' note that you cannot set focus to a label control
Exit For
End If
Next
End Sub

Sky1000