Question

In my application, when I press CTRL + S, my form (with Key Preview enabled) captures this and saves the document. But when the focus is in, for example, an edit control, I get an annoying “Ding” sound, or in general, windows sounds. How do I avoid this sound?

Here’s my form’s capture of this key event…

procedure TForm1.FormKeyDown(Sender: TObject; var Key: Word;
  Shift: TShiftState);
var
  C: String;
begin
  if not fChanging then
    Modified;
  if ssCtrl in Shift then begin
    C:= LowerCase(Char(Key));
    if C = 's' then begin
      DoSave;
      Key:= 0; //Tried this but didn't work
    end else
    if C = 'c' then begin
      //Copy selected item(s)
    end;
  end;
end;

PS – Is there a more standard way of capturing these events? Because I’m sure I’m doing something wrong, and I’m sure there’s another way I should be getting these key events without sounds.

Answer 1

A couple of things:

• Try putting your code into FormKeyPress instead of FormKeyDown. This will make the Key := 0; code work… You will need to handle the CTRL checking manually though, by using something like GetKeyState() (I originally had GetAsyncKeyState() here, but as Rob Kennedy points out, GetKeyState() is a much better option).
• Use an Action instead. Plop a TActionList on your form, double click on it, add an action and set it’s hot key to CTRL-S. Add your save code to it’s OnExecute event handler. This is the “proper” way to do it I believe.

Hope this helps.