Positioning of a menu item image (hbmpItem of a MENUITEMINFO) in a context menu

Question

I am inserting a menu item into an Outlook Context menu for a subject text control. Here you can find a previous question I had on doing this.

The issue I have is that the image of the menu item is positioned strangely in Outlook 2010. In Outlook 2007 it is positioned differently. It seems that the menu item is holding the position for the checked image free in Outlook 2010.

This shows how my menu item looks with the below code. Notice the large space to the left of the image.

This shows how it looks when i add the MIIM_CHECKMARKS flag to fMask and a bitmap to the hbmpUnchecked pointer.

            Dim bmp As Drawing.Bitmap = My.Resources.olContextMenuIcon
            bmp.MakeTransparent(bmp.GetPixel(10, 10))

            hbitmap = bmp.GetHbitmap

            Dim mii As New NativeMethodsEX.MENUITEMINFO
            With mii
                .cbSize = Marshal.SizeOf(mii)
                .fMask = NativeMethodsEX.MIIM.MIIM_BITMAP Or NativeMethodsEX.MIIM.MIIM_STRING Or NativeMethodsEX.MIIM.MIIM_FTYPE Or NativeMethodsEX.MIIM.MIIM_STATE Or NativeMethodsEX.MIIM.MIIM_ID
                .wID = WM_APP
                .fType = NativeMethodsEX.MFT.MFT_STRING
                .dwTypeData = String.Concat("Wrong Position")
                .fState = NativeMethodsEX.MFS.MFS_ENABLED
                .hbmpItem = hbitmap
            End With

            If ShowTop Then
                NativeMethodsEX.InsertMenuItem(aHwnd, 0, True, mii)
                NativeMethodsEX.InsertMenu(aHwnd, 1, NativeMethodsEX.MFT.MFT_BYPOSITION Or NativeMethodsEX.MFT.MFT_SEPARATOR, Nothing, Nothing)
            Else
                Dim menuItemCount As Integer = NativeMethodsEX.GetMenuItemCount(aHwnd)
                NativeMethodsEX.InsertMenu(aHwnd, menuItemCount, NativeMethodsEX.MFT.MFT_BYPOSITION Or NativeMethodsEX.MFT.MFT_SEPARATOR, Nothing, Nothing)
                NativeMethodsEX.InsertMenuItem(aHwnd, menuItemCount + 1, True, mii)
            End If

            NativeMethodsEX.DrawMenuBar(subjectRegionHwnd)

So how can I tell the menu item not to reserve the space for the check / uncheck image?

Answer 1

I have two answers to this problem.

I indicated above that the issue existed on an menu in Outlook 2010 but not in Outlook 2007. This is not true. These office versions are of course on different computers and it was a display setting in windows that was the cause of the problem. The above menu is what you get when you have the setting "Use Visual Styles on Windows and buttons" in Performance Options > Visual Effects turned off (Win 7). If you enable this setting then the menus look and especially act very differently.

But what if a user disables this setting how can you deal with it (Not sure if this is relevant for Win10).

You need to set the menu style through the use of the Menuinfo in particular you need to set the flag MNS_NOCHECK. Then the space is gone as the menu no longer is expecting the check marks.

This solution can also be seen here in another stackoverflow answer.