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Asked: 2026-05-12T13:34:01+00:00

I have this Win32 user-drawn tab control that is created as: CONTROL Tab1,IDC_TAB_CONT,SysTabControl32,TCS_BOTTOM |

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I have this Win32 user-drawn tab control that is created as:

    CONTROL "Tab1",IDC_TAB_CONT,"SysTabControl32",TCS_BOTTOM | 
            TCS_OWNERDRAWFIXED | NOT WS_VISIBLE,0,14,185,88

I’d like for this control to have its tabs resize as never to have to see the “sliding arrows“:

alt text

Now, pretty much everything about this control works as expected, except for that fact that it won’t respond to TabCtrl_SetItemSize. Try as I may, the size I get for the tabs when I get to draw them (in the DRAWITEMSTRUCT passed to WM_DRAWITEM) is always the size that fits the longest caption in them and never the size I’ve set with TabCtrl_SetItemSize.

However, in the TabCtrl_SetItemSize documentation, it says that:

[TabCtrl_SetItemSize] sets the width and height of tabs in a
fixed-width or owner-drawn tab
control.

The only way I’ve managed to have a decent resizing is by setting a dummy string of the desired length in it by sending the control a TCM_SETITEM message, and writing the desired text in it at draw time. This is rather inconvenient and not a particularly nice hack.

Is there anybody who would know

  1. Why TabCtrl_SetItemSize isn’t working as expected? and/or
  2. How to set the tab size properly?

Many thanks,

joce.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    • Setting TCS_OWNERDRAWFIXED style is not enough, you have also to add TCS_FIXEDWIDTH style.

    • The minimum size of a tab is at least icon width + 3 if icon is present.
      If you have icons (imageList attached to tabControl), you might get those “sliding arrows” even with fixed width (if there is less space available than: number of tabs*(icon width+3)

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