Accelerator keys not working when modeless popup has the focus

Question

My main CDialog sometimes displays a child modeless dialog like this:

It is only displayed if the user has configured it to automatically display.

---

It gets displayed via the main dialogs OnInitDialog where this function is called:

void CChristianLifeMinistryEditorDlg::DisplayAssignHistoryDialog()
{
    BOOL    bShowAssignHistoryDialog;
    bShowAssignHistoryDialog = theApp.GetNumberSetting(_T("Options"), _T("SM_ShowAssignHist"), TRUE);
    if (bShowAssignHistoryDialog)
    {
        m_pAssignHistoryDlg = std::make_unique<CAssignHistoryDlg>(); // .release();
        if (m_pAssignHistoryDlg != nullptr)
        {
            m_pAssignHistoryDlg->SetAssignHistMap(&m_mapSPtrHist, &m_HistoryOriginal);
            m_pAssignHistoryDlg->Create(IDD_DIALOG_ASSIGN_HISTORY, this);
            m_pAssignHistoryDlg->ShowWindow(SW_SHOWNORMAL);
            m_pAssignHistoryDlg->UpdateWindow();
            m_pAssignHistoryDlg->EnableTree(false);
        }
    }
}

WhatI have noticed is that some of my main windows ACCELERATOR hotkey keys don't always work. I then realised that this is because the popup window has the focus. If i single click anywhere on the main dialog to give it focus, then my accelerator hotkeys function.

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Is there any way that we can easily still allow the main editor to process it's hotkeys even though the modeless window might have focus? A standard way to cater for this?

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The main window handles the accelerators like this:

BOOL CChristianLifeMinistryEditorDlg::PreTranslateMessage(MSG * pMsg)
{
    if (m_hAccelTable)
    {
        if (::TranslateAccelerator(GetSafeHwnd(), m_hAccelTable, pMsg))
            return TRUE;
    }
}

And the popup modeless window also makes use of PreTranslateMessage (incase it is relevant):

BOOL CAssignHistoryDlg::PreTranslateMessage(MSG* pMsg)
{
    BOOL    bNoDispatch{}, bDealtWith = bDealtWith = FALSE ;

    if ( (pMsg->message == WM_KEYDOWN || pMsg->message == WM_KEYUP || 
        pMsg->message == WM_CHAR) 
        && pMsg->wParam == VK_RETURN)
    {
        // Eat it.
        bNoDispatch = TRUE ;
        bDealtWith = TRUE ;
    }

    if (!bDealtWith)
        bNoDispatch = CResizingDialog::PreTranslateMessage(pMsg);

    return bNoDispatch ;
}

Answer 1

I would pass your m_hAccelTable from CChristianLifeMinistryEditorDlg to CAssignHistoryDlg and add this to the beginning of CAssignHistoryDlg::PreTranslateMessage:

if (m_hAccelTable)
{
    if (::TranslateAccelerator(GetParent()->GetSafeHwnd(), m_hAccelTable, pMsg))
        return TRUE;
}