{"id":68993,"date":"2005-09-09T09:46:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-09T09:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2005\/09\/09\/how-can-i-remove-an-item-from-a-list-box-in-an-hta\/"},"modified":"2005-09-09T09:46:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-09T09:46:00","slug":"how-can-i-remove-an-item-from-a-list-box-in-an-hta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/how-can-i-remove-an-item-from-a-list-box-in-an-hta\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can I Remove an Item from a List Box in an HTA?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hey, \n

Hey, Scripting Guy! In an HTA, how can I remove an item from a list box?

— LW<\/P>\"Spacer\"\"Hey,\"Script<\/A> \n

Hey, LW. You know, we Scripting Guys are forward-thinking guys and, as such, we never look back. Did we put an item in a list box? If so, there must have been a darn good reason for that and we\u2019d never even consider<\/I> removing it. What\u2019s done is done, you know; we can\u2019t spend all our time reliving past mistakes. (Trust us: it would take a long<\/I> time for the Scripting Guys to relive all their past mistakes.)<\/P>\n

Most people aren\u2019t like the Scripting Guys, however. (Hey, who said \u201cthank goodness\u201d?) On top of that, there are plenty of valid reasons for wanting to remove options from a list box. For example, suppose you have an HTA (an HTML Application) that lists computer names; that HTA might allow you to select a computer and then perform some operation against it. After finishing the task, you might want to remove that computer from the list box; that way there won\u2019t be any confusion about which computers you\u2019ve used and which ones you haven\u2019t. (This isn\u2019t necessarily the best way to handle such a task, but it\u2019ll do as a simple example.) <\/P>\n

So how do you remove an option from a list box? Well, here\u2019s an HTA that features a list box with 8 items. When you click the Clear List Box<\/B> button, option 7 will be removed from the list box:<\/P>

<html>\n<head>\n<title>Clear a List Box<\/title>\n<\/head><\/p>\n
<SCRIPT Language=”VBScript”><\/p>\n
Sub ClearListbox\n    For Each objOption in AvailableOptions.Options\n        If objOption.Value = “7” Then\n            objOption.RemoveNode\n            Exit Sub\n        End If\n    Next \nEnd Sub<\/p>\n
<\/SCRIPT><\/p>\n
<body bgcolor=”buttonface”><\/p>\n
<select size=”8″ name=”AvailableOptions” style=”width:400″ >\n<option value=”1″>Option 1<\/option>\n<option value=”2″>Option 2<\/option>\n<option value=”3″>Option 3<\/option>\n<option value=”4″>Option 4<\/option>\n<option value=”5″>Option 5<\/option>\n<option value=”6″>Option 6<\/option>\n<option value=”7″>Option 7<\/option>\n<option value=”8″>Option 8<\/option>\n<\/select><\/p>\n
<p>\n<input id=runbutton  class=”button” type=”button” value=”Clear List Box” \nname=”run_button”  onClick=”ClearListbox”><p><\/p>\n
<\/body>\n<\/html>\n<\/PRE>\n
We won\u2019t spend much time talking about the code for creating an HTA; if you aren\u2019t familiar with HTAs and what they can do, you might take a look at Part 1<\/B><\/A> in our HTA tutorial series. For today\u2019s column, we\u2019re going to concentrate on the subroutine named ClearListbox, the code that actually removes option 7 from the list box:<\/P>
Sub ClearListbox\n    For Each objOption in AvailableOptions.Options\n        If objOption.Value = “7” Then\n            objOption.RemoveNode\n            Exit Sub\n        End If\n    Next \nEnd Sub\n<\/PRE>\n
Admittedly, we\u2019re using a kind of brute-force method in order to grab – and remove – option 7, but that should be fine; unless you have tens of thousands of options in your list box your code will run plenty fast. When we say we\u2019re using a brute-force method we simply mean this: we\u2019re grabbing a list of all the items in the list box and then examining each one to see if the Value is equal to 7. This line of code retrieves a collection of all the items in the list box named AvailableOptions:<\/P>
For Each objOption in AvailableOptions.Options\n<\/PRE>\n
And this<\/I> line of code checks each item to see if the Value is equal to 7:<\/P>
If objOption.Value = “7” Then\n<\/PRE>\n
And what if the value is<\/I> equal to 7? In that case, we call the RemoveNode<\/B> method to remove that option from the list box. And then, having done what we set out to do, we use this line of code to exit the subroutine:<\/P>
Exit Sub\n<\/PRE>\n
After all, having already found and removed the option in question, there\u2019s no sense in looping through the remainder of the collection.<\/P>\n
Keep in mind that this only works for removing items from a list box. We\u2019re experimenting with a modified version that will loop through your life and remove items (and mistakes) from there, but that might take awhile. We\u2019ll keep you posted.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! In an HTA, how can I remove an item from a list box?— LW Hey, LW. You know, we Scripting Guys are forward-thinking guys and, as such, we never look back. Did we put an item in a list box? If so, there must have been a darn good reason for that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,5,30],"class_list":["post-68993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-vbscript","tag-web-pages-and-htas"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! In an HTA, how can I remove an item from a list box?— LW Hey, LW. You know, we Scripting Guys are forward-thinking guys and, as such, we never look back. Did we put an item in a list box? If so, there must have been a darn good reason for that […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}