ShellAboutW function (shellapi.h)

Article
11/20/2024

Displays a ShellAbout dialog box.

Syntax

INT ShellAboutW(
  [in, optional] HWND    hWnd,
  [in]           LPCWSTR szApp,
  [in, optional] LPCWSTR szOtherStuff,
  [in, optional] HICON   hIcon
);

Parameters

[in, optional] hWnd

Type: HWND

A window handle to a parent window. This parameter can be NULL.

[in] szApp

Type: LPCTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string that contains text to be displayed in the title bar of the ShellAbout dialog box and on the first line of the dialog box after the text "Microsoft". If the text contains a separator (#) that divides it into two parts, the function displays the first part in the title bar and the second part on the first line after the text "Microsoft".

Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003: If the string pointed to by this parameter contains a separator (#), then the string must be writable.

Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008: This string cannot exceed 200 characters in length. The contents of szApp will no longer show after "Microsoft", unless there is a # separator, in which case the part after the # will completely replace the first line.

[in, optional] szOtherStuff

Type: LPCTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string that contains text to be displayed in the dialog box after the version and copyright information. This parameter can be NULL.

[in, optional] hIcon

Type: HICON

The handle of an icon that the function displays in the dialog box. This parameter can be NULL, in which case the function displays the Windows icon.

Return value

Type: int

TRUE if successful; otherwise, FALSE.

Remarks

Note that the ShellAbout function dialog box uses text and a default icon that are specific to Windows.

To see an example of a ShellAbout dialog box, choose About Windows from the Help menu drop-down list in Windows Explorer.

Note

The shellapi.h header defines ShellAbout as an alias that automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that is not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows XP [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	shellapi.h
Library	Shell32.lib
DLL	Shell32.dll (version 3.51 or later)
API set	ext-ms-win-shell-shell32-l1-2-2 (introduced in Windows 10, version 10.0.14393)

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