VB 2008 - ListView tool tips

[TysonLPrice]

This code will display the text of whatever item or sub items the cursor hovers over a listview. The length of the tool tip can be set via the ToolTipLengthPerLine variable. It was pieced together from various postings on the web and cleaned up for various conditions discovered in other posts like just displaying the item (not sub items) and the position being lost when the list view scrolling is in effect and the grey bar is slid to the right.

1. Start a new Windows application.
2. Drop a tool tip on the form named ToolTip1.
3. Paint a listview on the form called ListView1 ( I used about 4 x 4 inches).
4. Open un the code portion of the form and delete everything.
5. Paste in the code and run the solution.

Public Class Form1

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

        ListView1.Clear()
        ListView1.View = View.Details
        ListView1.GridLines = True
        ListView1.FullRowSelect = True
        ListView1.HideSelection = False
        ListView1.MultiSelect = False

        'Headings
        ListView1.Columns.Add("Primary Column")
        ListView1.Columns.Add("Sub One")
        ListView1.Columns.Add("Sub Two")
        ListView1.Columns.Add("Sub Three")


        Dim lvi As New ListViewItem
        'First row
        lvi.Text = "Primary Column"
        lvi.SubItems.Add("Sub Item One is a very long entry for demonstation")
        lvi.SubItems.Add("Sub Item Two")
        lvi.SubItems.Add("Sub Item three")
        ListView1.Items.Add(lvi)

        'Second row
        lvi = New ListViewItem
        lvi.Text = "Primary Column"
        lvi.SubItems.Add("Sub Item One")
        lvi.SubItems.Add("Sub Item Two is a very long entry for demonstation")
        lvi.SubItems.Add("Sub Item three")
        ListView1.Items.Add(lvi)

        For i As Integer = 0 To ListView1.Columns.Count - 1
            ListView1.Columns(i).Width = -2
        Next

    End Sub
    Private Sub ListView1_MouseMove(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs) Handles ListView1.MouseMove
        Dim LVHit As ListViewHitTestInfo
        Dim ToolTipText As String = ""
        Dim CurrentPosition As Integer = 0
        Dim LastBreakpoint As Integer = 0
        'Set ToolTipLengthPerLine to the size the tool tip should display.
        'It will break the text at that length, at the next space, and add linefeeds
        Dim ToolTipLengthPerLine As Integer = 40

        Try
            LVHit = ListView1.HitTest(e.X, e.Y)

            If LVHit IsNot Nothing Then
                If LVHit.SubItem IsNot Nothing Then
                    ToolTipText = LVHit.SubItem.Text
                    While CurrentPosition + ToolTipLengthPerLine < ToolTipText.Length
                        LastBreakpoint = ToolTipText.Substring(CurrentPosition, ToolTipLengthPerLine).LastIndexOf(" ")
                        ToolTipText = ToolTipText.Insert(CurrentPosition + LastBreakpoint + 1, vbCrLf)
                        CurrentPosition += LastBreakpoint + 3
                    End While
                End If
            End If
            ToolTip1.SetToolTip(ListView1, ToolTipText)
        Catch
            ToolTip1.SetToolTip(ListView1, "")
        End Try
    End Sub

End Class

[Hack]

Moved To The Codebank

[weirddemon]

Unless the text for the ListViewItem is cutoff because the text is longer than the column, then this really isn't useful.

And if it is cutoff, then just make the ShowItemToolTips True.

ie:



Thanks for the contribution though.

[TysonLPrice]

Unless the text for the ListViewItem is cutoff because the text is longer than the column, then this really isn't useful.

And if it is cutoff, then just make the ShowItemToolTips True.

ie:



Thanks for the contribution though.

I thought ShowItemToolTips only worked on the first item. Even if I'm wrong about that we have cramped listviews that don't show the entire columns because of space on the form. Also we use the same listview in all our programs as a user control and we consider it a nice feature that is consistant in it's behavior. We don't consider it useless and perhaps others won't either.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

[weirddemon]

I thought ShowItemToolTips only worked on the first item. Even if I'm wrong about that we have cramped listviews that don't show the entire columns because of space on the form. Also we use the same listview in all our programs as a user control and we consider it a nice feature that is consistant in it's behavior. We don't consider it useless and perhaps others won't either.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

No. That property applies to every ListViewItem.

I'm not saying that your code is trash, but what I'm saying is that it's better just to turn on a property with two clicks, than write a bunch of code for no reason. And if you have a custom control that has other changes you've made, then all you need to do is turn on that property and delete your ToolTip code. It just clutters things up.

But either way, it's important that I mention this. If someone else comes across this thread and all they see is your method, they may get the idea that no other method exists.

[TysonLPrice]

No. That property applies to every ListViewItem.

I'm not saying that your code is trash, but what I'm saying is that it's better just to turn on a property with two clicks, than write a bunch of code for no reason. And if you have a custom control that has other changes you've made, then all you need to do is turn on that property and delete your ToolTip code. It just clutters things up.

But either way, it's important that I mention this. If someone else comes across this thread and all they see is your method, they may get the idea that no other method exists.

OK...fair enough concerning someone else seeing this. I painted a listview, set ShowItemToolTips to true, loaded three rows and three columns and the behavior is not consistant. Additionally, I went down this path because of that and I wanted them on all the sub items. I googled that and found the same question many times including a post here with a method similar to what I did. Please take the code I posted and comment out the routine. Set ShowItemToolTips to true and see if it works on all the items and sub items consistantly.

If it does I will ask for this post to be deleted.

[weirddemon]

OK...fair enough concerning someone else seeing this. I painted a listview, set ShowItemToolTips to true, loaded three rows and three columns and the behavior is not consistant. Additionally, I went down this path because of that and I wanted them on all the sub items. I googled that and found the same question many times including a post here with a method similar to what I did. Please take the code I posted and comment out the routine. Set ShowItemToolTips to true and see if it works one all the items and sub items consistantly.

If it does I will ask for this post to be deleted.

What do you mean it's not consistent? If the text is outside of the columns bounds and you hover over it, it will show every time. Now, if you're expecting it to show even if the text is within the bounds of the columns width, then it won't. And it shouldn't. It can all be seen, so there's no point.

But regardless, this post should be deleted. It's always good to see two solutions to the same problem. Even though you can just set one property, the user might need a more fine tune control over it and so this code would help them achieve that.

Not only that, but this thread will help any user who is having the same problem resolve it by either method.

I'm glad you've posted your code, though. We just need to present all options so people can pick and choose.

[TysonLPrice]

Digging in a little deeper I came across this which may help explain why we differ on this. Mainly on the mode you are in:

"I don't say much about my .NET work here, sometimes because the nature of that work is proprietary, but usually because there's so much about .NET already on the web that it'd just be redundant. I had a hard time finding out exactly how .NET 2.0 supported tooltips for ListView subitems, though, so I thought I'd put a small blurb on the web for the benefit of others...


The ListView control in .NET 2.0 offers a number of improvements, one of which is a new property called ShowItemTooltips. When true, this property allows a tooltip to be displayed when the user mouses over an item in the ListView. The text displayed for the ListViewItem can be set by its ToolTipText property.

All very nice, but I had an application where I was displaying a table of data (a ListView in "details" mode) where some of the data could quite naturally appear longer than the column width allowed. A tooltip containing the subitem text seemed just the ticket, and according to the documentation for ShowItemTooltips, "When FullRowSelect is set to true, ToolTips for a ListViewItem.ListViewSubItem will not be shown; only the ToolTip for the parent ListViewItem will display."

Tantalizing: Microsoft implies that tooltips for subitems are supported somehow. Browsing ListViewSubItem members, however, shows no ToolTipText property similar to that for ListViewItem. So what is Microsoft's documentation really saying?

A little experimentation turned up the answer. If you set ShowItemTooltips for the ListView control in "details" mode and do nothing else, the ListView control will automatically provide tooltips for items and subitems that exceed their column's widths. This turns out to work even if the FullRowSelect property is set to true. If ToolTipText has been set for a ListViewItem and FullRowSelect is true, then the tooltip will appear for the whole row; that's the case where tooltips won't be displayed for subitems.

Note that, for subitems, the tooltip text will be the same as the subitem text. In my case, that's exactly what I wanted, and I think it's a sensible default behavior. I can imagine applications, though, where it might be handy to have a ToolTipText property on ListViewSubItems, allowing the tooltip to differ from the subitem text. If that's what you need, you might have to look elsewhere until the next iteration of the .NET framework."

[TysonLPrice]

What do you mean it's not consistent? If the text is outside of the columns bounds and you hover over it, it will show every time. Now, if you're expecting it to show even if the text is within the bounds of the columns width, then it won't. And it shouldn't. It can all be seen, so there's no point.

But regardless, this post should be deleted. It's always good to see two solutions to the same problem. Even though you can just set one property, the user might need a more fine tune control over it and so this code would help them achieve that.

Not only that, but this thread will help any user who is having the same problem resolve it by either method.

I'm glad you've posted your code, though. We just need to present all options so people can pick and choose.

I see what you mean if all the text is visible it doesn't show. The article I posted also sheads some light on why I went down this path.

By the way...when you said "But regardless, this post should be deleted." is that what you meant? The context around that seemed to indicate to me to leave it in place.

Finally, if you Google showing tooltips on sub items you will get lots of hits and solutions similar to what I posted. I'm not the only one that got confused.

[JonKeeler]

Sorry to hark on about this but I've found setting
the showitem tool tips property to be rather useless
if you happen to have the form topmost...the tips
fall behind the form,haven't tried the coded,
maybe the same thing?...just an observation