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Organizing Gallery Items

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|  Overview |  How Do I

The Gallery initially organizes some components for you into the default Gallery folders: the Visual C++ Components folder and the Registered ActiveX Controls folder. As you add new items to the Gallery, you may want to customize the organization of the Gallery to suit your needs. You can create folders to store items, and you can delete, rename, and rearrange folders you have created.

You can store shortcuts (links) to the Visual C++ Components folder or Registered ActiveX Controls folder using Windows Explorer to drag them from the default folder to a folder you have created. Note that the next time you start Gallery, the shortcuts in the default folders are restored, and the shortcuts in your own folders remain.

What do you want to do?

  • Create a new Gallery folder

  • Rename a Gallery file or folder

  • Change the view of a Gallery folder

  • Move Gallery items from folder to folder

  • Delete a Gallery file or folder

  • View a Gallery item’s properties

  • Get More Help on a Gallery Item

In the Gallery dialog box, click the New Folder button. (Or right-click in an unused portion of the Gallery’s browser window and select New from the shortcut menu.) This creates an empty folder called “New Folder.”

In the Gallery dialog box, click on the folder name, wait for the cursor to appear, then rename the folder. Or right-click on a folder; from the shortcut menu, select Rename, then specify the new folder name.

In the Gallery dialog, right-click on an unused portion of the browser window. From the shortcut menu, select View, specifying large icons, small icons, file list, or file details. Arrange Icons by name, type, size, or date.

Use Windows Explorer to drag Gallery items from one location to another.

  • For user-defined components (.OGX files) the file itself is moved or copied.

  • For Visual C++ Components and ActiveX Controls, the Gallery creates a shortcut (link) to the item in the new folder.

You can delete user-defined components and folders in the same way you delete files from the Windows Explorer: By selecting the component or folder in the Gallery dialog box, then pressing the DEL key. Alternately you can right-click on the component or folder, then from the shortcut menu, select Delete.

To remove registered components or ActiveX controls (Microsoft or third-party), you must first uninstall the item by running Regsvr32.exe with the /u option, then delete the item from the Gallery.

Although you can delete the default folders, they will reappear the next time you start Visual C++, and will contain links to the currently registered components and controls. The shortcut (link) to the control is recreated in the default folder because Visual C++ reads the registry information on startup.

Note   Deleting the Gallery folder is not recommended. If you delete the Gallery folder, the next time you start Visual C++, the Gallery folder will reappear, but will be empty.

You can view the properties (such as version information and file dependencies) of Gallery items using the Properties dialog.

To view properties for a Gallery item, right-click on the item, and then on the shortcut menu click Properties.

You can obtain help on any component or control in the default folders by selecting the item and then clicking More Info.