MFC: BrowseForFolder Dialog box

Answer 1

Maybe some of the ideas in this will do what you want?

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dialog/browse_for_folder_dialog.aspx

or this

http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-p/files/browserfunctionsdialogs/article.php/c4443

Answer 2

If you just want an edit control that allows the user to type in the name of a directory entry, that is possible. The C++ class you're using is a wrapper round the Win32 SHBrowseForFolder() method, and that method supports having an edit box by setting the BIF_EDITBOX (or better, BIF_USENEWUI) in the ulFlags member of the BROWSEINFO structure.

Looking at the C++ class, it looks like the simplest way to achieve this will be to pass BIF_USENEWUI as the dwFlags member in the constructor call. (Though I'd be tempted to just call SHBrowseForFolder directly and not bother with the C++ class.)

Do note the warning about this flag in MSDN, though: OleInitialize() or CoInitialize() must have been called before bringing up the dialog with this flag.

More generally, if you want an edit control that you can use for your own purposes, allowing the user to enter anything, that's more of a problem: there's no way to extend the dialog used by SHBrowseForFolder() with custom controls. If you want to do that, you'd end up having to re-implement the whole dialog, which isn't a good idea.

Also, as a final note, if you can limit yourself to Vista (and beyond) then there's another way to have a directory selection dialog: use the new IFileDialog COM interface, with the FOS_PICKFOLDERS flag.