ScrollableText Control in MSI

A few questions about the ScrollableText Control in MSI come up every once in a while, so I thought I'd capture the answers here for posterity. Ideally this is information that will eventually show up in the MSI SDK documentation (but probably "word-smithed" to be more appropriate for "official documentation").

Q: Why doesn't my text show up in the Scrollable Text Control?

A: As noted at the bottom of the ScrollableText control documentation, the ScrollableText Control is really just a RICHEDIT control. The way the Windows Installer creates the control requires that only rich text be loaded.

That means if you tried to put just "My Text" in the control, you'll end up with a blank control. Instead, you need something more like "{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial;}}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 My Text\par}".

Q: But my text is rich text and it still won't show up. What now?

A: If you wrote your rich text file in Word, try loading the file into WordPad and then saving. Word has support for many advanced features of RTF that the typical RICHEDIT control cannot handle. Saving the document via WordPad removes any of those advanced features.

Of course, be sure to go back and read through your text. It is possible the conversion process may remove some important formatting that makes your text unreadable.

Q: Great, but when I click on my hyperlinks they don't launch the browser?

The RICHEDIT control does not support hyperlinks. You can color the text blue and underline it but the text still won't be a clickable hyperlink.

Hyperlinks in general are just not supported by the native MSI UI. Sad but true.