BackgroundColor Property [Visio 2003 SDK Documentation]

Determines the background color of the active Microsoft Office Visio drawing window and its associated print preview and full-screen view windows.

colorRet = object.BackgroundColor

object.BackgroundColor = colorVal

colorRet    OLE_COLOR. Current background color of the drawing window.

object    Required. An expression that returns a Window object.

colorVal   Required OLE_COLOR. New background color of the drawing window.

Version added

2003

Remarks

Valid values for an OLE_COLOR property within Visio can be one of the following:

• &H00bbggrr, where bb is the blue value between 0 and 0xFF (255), gg the green value, and rr the red value.
• &H800000xx, where xx is a valid GetSysColor index.

For details about the GetSysColor function, search for "GetSysColor" in the Microsoft Platform SDK on MSDN.

The OLE_COLOR data type is used for properties that return colors. When a property is declared as OLE_COLOR, the Properties window in the Visual Basic Editor displays a color-picker dialog box that allows the user to select the color for the property visually, rather than having to remember the numeric equivalent.

In addition, you can use the following Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) color constants for OLE_COLOR.

Constant	Value	Description
vbBlack	0x0	Black
vbRed	0xFF	Red
vbGreen	0xFF00	Green
vbYellow	0xFFFF	Yellow
vbBlue	0xFF0000	Blue
vbMagenta	0xFF00FF	Magenta
vbCyan	0xFFFF00	Cyan
vbWhite	0xFFFFFF	White

For a drawing window, print preview window, or full-screen view window, setting the BackgroundColor property of the window to a value other than the default (-1) overrides the ApplicationSettings.DrawingBackgroundColor, ApplicationSettings.PrintPreviewBackgroundColor, and ApplicationSettings.FullScreenBackgroundColor settings for that set of windows. To be able to reset these properties for the same set of windows, you must reset BackgroundColor to its default value, -1. If multiple drawings are open, setting BackgroundColor for one set of windows has no effect on the setting for other open window sets.

However, for a ShapeSheet window, setting the BackgroundColor property of the window to a value other than the default changes the background color of the ShapeSheet window, but has no effect on any of the other window settings.

Example

The following VBA macro shows how to use the BackgroundColor property to get and set the current drawing window background color. It also shows how to get an ApplicationSettings object from the Visio Application object, and it demonstrates the relationship between the BackgroundColor property and the ApplicationSettings.DrawingBackgroundColor property. This example assumes there is an active drawing window open in Visio and that initially all background color properties are set to their default values.

Public Sub BackgroundColor_Example()

    Dim vsoApplicationSettings As Visio.ApplicationSettings
    Set vsoApplicationSettings = Visio.Application.Settings
    
    'Get the current application background color.
    Debug.Print vsoApplicationSettings.DrawingBackgroundColor
    
    'Get the current window background color.
    Debug.Print ActiveWindow.BackgroundColor
    
    'Change the application background color.
    'This will also change the current window color as
    'well as the setting in the Color Settings dialog box.
    vsoApplicationSettings.DrawingBackgroundColor = vbRed
        
    'Change the current window background color.
    ActiveWindow.BackgroundColor = vbMagenta
        
    'Change the application background color again.
    'This time, there will be no change in the current
    'window color, but the dialog box setting will change.
    vsoApplicationSettings.DrawingBackgroundColor = vbYellow
       
    'Reset Window.BackgroundColor to its default value.
    ActiveWindow.BackgroundColor = -1
       
    'Change the application background color again.
    'Now both the current window color
    'and the dialog box setting change.
    vsoApplicationSettings.DrawingBackgroundColor = vbBlue
            
End Sub

Applies to | ApplicationSettings object

See Also | BackgroundColor property | BackgroundColorGradient property | DrawingBackgroundColorGradient property | DrawingPageColor property