ITextRange::Delete method (tom.h)

Article
10/05/2021

Mimics the DELETE and BACKSPACE keys, with and without the CTRL key depressed.

Syntax

HRESULT Delete(
  long Unit,
  long Count,
  long *pDelta
);

Parameters

Unit

Type: long

Unit to use. Unit can be tomCharacter (the default value) or tomWord.

Count

Type: long

Number of Units to delete. If Count= zero, it deletes the text in the range only. If Count is greater than zero, ITextRange::Delete acts as if the DELETE key was pressed Count times. If Count is less than zero, it acts as if the BACKSPACE key was pressed Count times. The default value is 1. For more information, see the Remarks.

pDelta

Type: long*

The count of units deleted. It can be null. The pDelta parameter is set equal to the number of Units deleted. Deleting the text in a nondegenerate range counts as one Unit.

Return value

Type: HRESULT

This method returns an HRESULT value. If successful, it returns S_OK. Otherwise it returns one of the following values. For more information about COM error codes, see Error Handling in COM.

Return code	Description
E_ACCESSDENIED	Text is write-protected.
S_FALSE	Failure for some other reason.

Remarks

If Count = zero, this method deletes the text in the range, that is, it deletes nothing if the range is only an insertion point.

If Count is not zero, and the range is an insertion point (that is, degenerate), | Count| (absolute value of Count) Units are deleted in the logical direction given by the sign of Count, where a positive value is the direction toward the end of the story, and a negative value is toward the start of the story.

If Count is not zero, and the range is nondegenerate (contains text), the text in the range is deleted (regardless of the values of Unit and Count), thereby creating an insertion point. Then, | Count| - 1 Units are deleted in the logical direction given by the sign of Count.

The text in the range can also be deleted by assigning a null string to the range (executing statement r = where r is the range). However, ITextRange::Delete does not require allocating a BSTR.

Deleting the end-of-paragraph mark (CR) results in the special behavior of the Microsoft Word UI. Four cases are of particular interest:

If you delete just the CR but the paragraph includes text, then the CR is deleted, and the following paragraph gets the same paragraph formatting as current one.
If you delete the CR as well as some, but not all, of the characters in the following paragraph, the characters left over from the current paragraph get the paragraph formatting of the following paragraph.
If you select to the end of a paragraph, but not the whole paragraph, the CR is not deleted.
If you delete the whole paragraph (from the beginning through the CR), you delete the CR as well (unless it is the final CR in the file).

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows Vista [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows Server 2003 [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	tom.h
DLL	Msftedit.dll