INFO: MFC OLE Classes Do Not Support "Embed in self"

• The Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), included with:

      - Microsoft Visual C++ for Windows, versions 1.5 and 1.51
      - Microsoft Visual C++, 32-bit Edition, version 2.0, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0
        on the following platform: x86
  

SUMMARY

The MFC OLE classes in the versions listed above do not include the ability for a container/server to embed items of its own type within an instance of itself.

Users attempting to embed an OLE item from the container/server into itself will receive the "Failed to create object. Check system registry" dialog box. Further debugging will show that QueryInterface failed to return the IViewObject interface for the embedded item.

MORE INFORMATION

While OLE makes "embed in self" possible, it requires the use of the API call OleCreateEmbeddingHelper to connect the OLE2 or OLE32 DLL as the default in-process handler. The MFC OLE classes do not make use of this, and the architecture of an MFC application would make it extremely difficult to integrate this support.

MFC applications rely on handle maps and global tracking of such things as the toolbar and status bar of the application. An OLE item from this same application, if activated for visual editing, would attempt to negotiate space for a second toolbar and status bar within the same frame window. The MFC framework would also attempt to add these objects to its handle map, even though they are already there. Altering this would require substantial unsupported changes to the MFC source code. See article Q120682 for information on how to exclude the current server object from its COleInsertDialog