State of the mousebuttons

Is there a way of trapping a mousedown outside a vb program

If not, how do I read the state of the mousebutton?
(And I don't mean in a mouse_down event...)

You can probably use a mouse hook, or to test whether a button is up or down you can use GetAsyncKeyState...

VB Code:

Private Declare Function GetAsyncKeyState Lib "user32" (ByVal vKey As Long) As Integer
 
Private Sub Timer1_Timer()
     
    If (GetAsyncKeyState(vbLeftButton) And &H8000) Then
        Me.Caption = "Left Button Down"
    Else
        Me.Caption = "Left Button Up"
    End If
    
End Sub

That works OK!

But how about trapping keys from the keyboard outside a vbprogram?

This should help you...