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C# WinForms - Adding text to each line in a textbox

I am very new to C#. I learn best by experimentation, but of course, I will get completely stumped sometimes. I will try to explain my problem the best I can with what knowledge of the programming language I currently have.
I have been trying to create a simple tool to edit/add lines of text into a text file. I have done much researching, especially on this site, and all the information has been extremely helpful. My problem though, is adding text to both sides to a single line of text within a multi-line textbox.
So lets say I have a textbox with 2 existing lines; I want to add some text next to both sides of to one of one lines, and do the same to the next one. Here is an example of what the text would look like before and after a button is hit:
Before
is not the same as is different than
After
A is not the same as B A is different than B
The two lines in "Before" would be in textBox1 (multiline), and would be inserted to richTextBox1 as "After".
Hopefully I have explained it clearly enough, I do not know where to begin with this.
Thank you.

If you know which index you have to update the text, then you should be able to inset the value directly using insert function exposed by string class
Example:
//Get the text box value
var formatedTextboxString = this.textbox1.Text;
formatedTextboxString = formatedTextboxString.Insert(0, "A ");
formatedTextboxString = formatedTextboxString.Insert(21, "B");
//Place the formated text back to the richTextBox
this.richTextBox1.Text = formatedTextboxString;

Try
"{0} is not the same as {1} {2} is different than {3}"
In textbox1. Then use:
textbox2.Text = String.Format(textbox1.Text, A, B, A, B);

In case if you have multiline textbox:
var list = new List<string>(textBox1.Lines);
for (int i = 0; i < list.Count; ++i)
{
list[i] = "A" + list[i] + "B";
}
textBox1.Lines = list.ToArray();

string[] arr = textBox1.Text.Split(Environment.Newline);
//then loop over each line and add whatever you want :-
foreach (string s in arr)
{
//add here
}
I guess this is good enough hint to start with :)

How to add a line to a multiline TextBox?

How can i add a line of text to a multi-line TextBox?
e.g. pseudocode;
textBox1.Clear();
textBox1.Lines.Add("1000+");
textBox1.Lines.Add("750-999");
textBox1.Lines.Add("400-749");
...snip...
textBox1.Lines.Add("40-59");
or
textBox1.Lines.Append("brown");
textBox1.Lines.Append("brwn");
textBox1.Lines.Append("brn");
textBox1.Lines.Append("brow");
textBox1.Lines.Append("br");
textBox1.Lines.Append("brw");
textBox1.Lines.Append("brwm");
textBox1.Lines.Append("bron");
textBox1.Lines.Append("bwn");
textBox1.Lines.Append("brnw");
textBox1.Lines.Append("bren");
textBox1.Lines.Append("broe");
textBox1.Lines.Append("bewn");
The only methods that TextBox.Lines implements (that i can see) are:
Clone
CopyTo
Equals
GetType
GetHashCode
GetEnumerator
Initialize
GetLowerBound
GetUpperBound
GetLength
GetLongLength
GetValue
SetValue
ToString

#Casperah pointed out that i'm thinking about it wrong:
A TextBox doesn't have lines
it has text
that text can be split on the CRLF into lines, if requested
but there is no notion of lines
The question then is how to accomplish what i want, rather than what WinForms lets me.
There are subtle bugs in the other given variants:
textBox1.AppendText("Hello" + Environment.NewLine);
textBox1.AppendText("Hello" + "\r\n");
textBox1.Text += "Hello\r\n"
textbox1.Text += System.Environment.NewLine + "brown";
They either append or prepend a newline when one (might) not be required.
So, extension helper:
public static class WinFormsExtensions
{
public static void AppendLine(this TextBox source, string value)
{
if (source.Text.Length==0)
source.Text = value;
else
source.AppendText("\r\n"+value);
}
}
So now:
textBox1.Clear();
textBox1.AppendLine("red");
textBox1.AppendLine("green");
textBox1.AppendLine("blue");
and
textBox1.AppendLine(String.Format("Processing file {0}", filename));
Note: Any code is released into the public domain. No attribution required.

I would go with the System.Environment.NewLine or a StringBuilder
Then you could add lines with a string builder like this:
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.AppendLine("brown");
sb.AppendLine("brwn");
textbox1.Text += sb.ToString();
or NewLine like this:
textbox1.Text += System.Environment.NewLine + "brown";
Better:
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(textbox1.Text);
sb.AppendLine("brown");
sb.AppendLine("brwn");
textbox1.Text = sb.ToString();

Append a \r\n to the string to put the text on a new line.
textBox1.Text += ("brown\r\n");
textBox1.Text += ("brwn");
This will produce the two entries on separate lines.

Try this
textBox1.Text += "SomeText\r\n"
you can also try
textBox1.Text += "SomeText" + Environment.NewLine;
Where \r is carriage return and \n is new line

You have to use the AppendText method of the textbox directly. If you try to use the Text property, the textbox will not scroll down as new line are appended.
textBox1.AppendText("Hello" + Environment.NewLine);

The "Lines" property of a TextBox is an array of strings. By definition, you cannot add elements to an existing string[], like you can to a List<string>. There is simply no method available for the purpose. You must instead create a new string[] based on the current Lines reference, and assign it to Lines.
Using a little Linq (.NET 3.5 or later):
textBox1.Lines = textBox.Lines.Concat(new[]{"Some Text"}).ToArray();
This code is fine for adding one new line at a time based on user interaction, but for initializing a textbox with a few dozen new lines, it will perform very poorly. If you're setting the initial value of a TextBox, I would either set the Text property directly using a StringBuilder (as other answers have mentioned), or if you're set on manipulating the Lines property, use a List to compile the collection of values and then convert it to an array to assign to Lines:
var myLines = new List<string>();
myLines.Add("brown");
myLines.Add("brwn");
myLines.Add("brn");
myLines.Add("brow");
myLines.Add("br");
myLines.Add("brw");
...
textBox1.Lines = myLines.ToArray();
Even then, because the Lines array is a calculated property, this involves a lot of unnecessary conversion behind the scenes.

The adding of Environment.NewLine or \r\n was not working for me, initially, with my textbox. I found I had forgotten to go into the textbox's Behavior properties and set the "Multiline" property to "True" for it to add the lines! I just thought I'd add this caveat since no one else did in the answers, above, and I had thought the box was just going to auto-expand and forgot I needed to actually set the Mulitline property for it to work. I know it's sort of a bonehead thing (which is the kind of thing that happens to us late on a Friday afternoon), but it might help someone remember to check that. Also, in the Appearance section is the "ScrollBars" property that I needed to set to "Both", to get both horizontal and vertical bars so that text could actually be scrolled and seen in its entirety. So the answer here isn't just a code one by appending Environment.NewLine or \r\n to the .Text, but also make sure your box is set up properly with the right properties.

Just put a line break into your text.
You don't add lines as a method. Multiline just supports the use of line breaks.

If you know how many lines you want, create an array of String with that many members (e.g. myStringArray).
Then use myListBox.Lines = myStringArray;

Above methods did not work for me. I got the following exception:
Exception : 'System.InvalidOperationException' in System.Windows.Forms.dll
Turns out I needed to call Invoke on my controls first. See answer here.

different format into one single line Interop.word

I've been trying to figure out how to insert 2 different formats into the same paragraph using interop.word in c# like this:
hello planet earth here's what I want to do

Assuming you have your document defined as oDoc, the following code should get you the desired result:
Word.Paragraph oPara = oDoc.Content.Paragraphs.Add(ref oMissing);
oPara.Range.Text = "hello planet earth here's what I want to do";
object oStart = oPara.Range.Start + 13;
object oEnd = oPara.Range.Start + 18;
Word.Range rBold = oDoc.Range(ref oStart, ref oEnd);
rBold.Bold = 1;

I had to modify Dennis' answer a little to get it to work for me.
What I'm doing it totally automated, so I have to only work with variables.
private void InsertMultiFormatParagraph(string text, int size, int spaceAfter = 10) {
var para = docWord.Content.Paragraphs.Add(ref objMissing);
para.Range.Text = text;
// Explicitly set this to "not bold"
para.Range.Font.Bold = 0;
para.Range.Font.Size = size;
para.Format.SpaceAfter = spaceAfter;
var start = para.Range.Start;
var end = para.Range.Start + text.IndexOf(":");
var rngBold = docWord.Range(ref objStart, ref objEnd);
rngBold.Bold = 1;
para.Range.InsertParagraphAfter();
}
The main difference that made me want to make this post was that the Paragraph should be inserted AFTER the font is changed. My initial thought was to insert it after setting the SpaceAfter property, but then the objStart and objEnd values were tossing "OutOfRange" Exceptions. It was a little counter-intuitive, so I wanted to make sure everyone knew.

The following code seemed to work the best for me when formatting a particular selection within a paragraph. Using Word's built in "find" function to make a selection, then formatting only the selected text. This approach would only work well if the text to select is a unique string within the selection. But for most situations I have run across, this seems to work.
oWord.Selection.Find.Text = Variable_Containing_Text_to_Select; // sets the variable for find and select
oWord.Selection.Find.Execute(); // Executes find and select
oWord.Selection.Font.Bold = 1; // Modifies selection
oWord.Selection.Collapse(); // Clears selection
Hope this helps someone!

I know this post is old, but it came out in almost all my searches. The answer below is in case someone, like me, wants to do this for more than one word in a sentence. In this case, I loop through a string array of variables that contain strings and change that text to bold--modifing #joshman1019
string[] makeBold = new string[4] {a, b, c, d};
foreach (string s in makeBold)
{
wApp.Selection.Find.Text = s; //changes with each iteration
wApp.Selection.Find.Execute();
wApp.Selection.Font.Bold = 1;
wApp.Selection.Collapse(); //used to 'clear' the selection
wApp.Selection.Find.ClearFormatting();
}
So, each string represented by the variable will be bold. So if a = "hello world", then Hello World is made bold in the Word doc. Hope it saves someone some time.

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd post here anyway for those that come across it via Google (like I did). I got most of the way to a solution with krillgar's approach, but I had trouble because some of my text contains newlines. Accordingly, this modification worked best for me:
private void WriteText(string text)
{
var para = doc.Content.Paragraphs.Add();
var start = para.Range.Start;
var end = para.Range.Start + text.IndexOf(":");
para.Range.Text = text;
para.Range.Font.Bold = 0;
para.Range.InsertParagraphAfter();
if(text.Contains(":")){
var rngBold = doc.Range(start, end);
rngBold.Bold = 1;
}
}
The key difference is that I calculate start and end earlier in the function. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think if your new text has newlines in it, the later calculation of start/end messes something up.
And obviously my solution is intended for text with the format:
Label: Data
where Label is to be bolded.

Consider usage of Range.Collapse eventually with Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd as parameter.
That would allow next text to have formatting different than previous text (and next text formatting will not affect formatting of previous one).

winforms big paragraph tooltip

I'm trying to display a paragraph in a tooltip when I hover a certain picture box. The problem is, the tooltip takes that paragraph, and spans it on one line, all across my screen. How can I make it so that it takes a smaller, more readable area?
or, maybe you have another technique to achieve the same thing, but without the tooltip function?

Add line breaks to your string.
string tooltip = string.Format("Here is a lot of text that I want{0}to display on multiple{0}lines.", Environment.NewLine);

You don't need to use code to include \r\n characters.
If you click on the dropdown arrow to the right of the ToolTip property value, it displays a multiline edit box.
Just press Enter to create a new line.

Here's something you can use:
private const int maximumSingleLineTooltipLength = 20;
private static string AddNewLinesForTooltip(string text)
{
if (text.Length < maximumSingleLineTooltipLength)
return text;
int lineLength = (int)Math.Sqrt((double)text.Length) * 2;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
int currentLinePosition = 0;
for (int textIndex = 0; textIndex < text.Length; textIndex++)
{
// If we have reached the target line length and the next
// character is whitespace then begin a new line.
if (currentLinePosition >= lineLength &&
char.IsWhiteSpace(text[textIndex]))
{
sb.Append(Environment.NewLine);
currentLinePosition = 0;
}
// If we have just started a new line, skip all the whitespace.
if (currentLinePosition == 0)
while (textIndex < text.Length && char.IsWhiteSpace(text[textIndex]))
textIndex++;
// Append the next character.
if (textIndex < text.Length)
sb.Append(text[textIndex]);
currentLinePosition++;
}
return sb.ToString();
}

Have you tried inserting newlines \n into the tooltip, to get it to span multiple lines?

You can't add the \r\n in the tooltip property of the control. It simply doesn't work. To resolve you issue, simply add the tooltip in the code itself typically in the InitializeComponent method.
I.E.: (c#, winform example)
this.mToolTip.SetToolTip(this.tbxControl,
"This is the first line of the tooltip.\r\n" +
"This is the second line of the tooltip.");

Using new line worked for me
System.Environment.NewLine

If you enter a tool tip in the DataGridView properties control for columns, and I suspect other WinForms control designers, and include a "\r\n" in the tool tip, you will see "\\r\\n" in the tool tip that is displayed when you run the code. This is because the tool tip property is already a string, and the designer interprets the code from the tool tip entered in the properties window as "\\r\\n". You can go to the .Designer.cs file, manually edit the file, and replace "\\r\\n" with "\r\n". You will then see the tool tip with the line break when the application runs. If you go back and look at the value of the tool tip in the designer, you will see the tool tip without the line break, but it will be there, and will not be re-transformed to "\\r\\n" by the designer. Despite a comment made earlier, you only need the "\n". The "\r" is not necessary.

Adding Control based on info in txt file

Following code, credit: Guffa.
Hello All,
I'm trying to add controls to a Form at runtime based on the information found in a Plain Text File. The structure? of the text file is always the same, and will not change. Example:
File.txt:
Label
"This is a label"
320, 240
Explanation:
Control
Text
Location
The following code, provided to me by Guffa, doesn't cause any errors or anything, but at the same time, nothing happens at all. And I'm not sure why... Can somebody please explain why the label doesn't get created and added to the form with the right info attached to it?
MatchCollection lines = Regex.Matches(File.ReadAllText(fileName), #"(.+?)\r\n""([^""]+)""\r\n(\d+), (\d+)\r\n");
foreach (Match match in lines) {
string control = match.Groups[1].Value;
string text = match.Groups[2].Value;
int x = Int32.Parse(match.Groups[3].Value);
int y = Int32.Parse(match.Groups[4].Value);
Console.WriteLine("{0}, \"{1}\", {2}, {3}", control, text, x, y);
if(control == "Label")
{
Label label = new Label();
label.Text = text;
canvas.Controls.Add(label); // canvas is a Panel Control.
label.Location = new Point(x, y);
}
}
I hope that I have clearly explained my situation. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
jase

My guess is that your file doesn't have quite the right format. If you step into the code, does it match anything?
If so, what gets printed to the console?
Have you tried it with the exact sample shown in the question? While I haven't tried it in a form, I've tried the rest of the code above with the sample file, and it works fine.
Personally I don't think I'd use a regex to match all of the lines like this - it makes it harder to diagnose issues - but it should work okay if the file is correct. You say you don't understand the regex provided - that's another good reason not to use it, to be honest. Even if it's entirely correct, it's not a good idea to use code that you don't understand - you won't be able to maintain it.
I would personally just read the lines three at a time and then deal with them that way. Something like this:
private static readonly Regex LocationPattern = new Regex(#"^(\d+), (\d+)$");
...
using (TextReader reader = File.OpenText(filename))
{
while (true)
{
string control = reader.ReadLine();
string text = reader.ReadLine();
string location = reader.ReadLine();
if (control == null)
{
break;
}
if (text == null || location == null)
{
// Or however you want to handle this...
throw new InvalidConfigurationFileException
("Incorrect number of lines");
}
if (text.Length < 2 || !text.StartsWith("\"") || !text.EndsWith("\""))
{
// Or however you want to handle this...
throw new InvalidConfigurationFileException
("Text is not in quotes");
}
text = text.Substring(1, text.Length - 2);
Match locationMatch = LocationPattern.Match(location);
if (!locationMatch.Success)
{
// Or however you want to handle this...
throw new InvalidConfigurationFileException
("Invalid location: " + location);
}
// You could use int.TryParse if you want to handle this differently
Point parsedLocation = new Point(int.Parse(match.Groups[1].Value),
int.Parse(match.Groups[2].Value));
// Now the rest of the code before
}
}
As you can tell, it's a lot more code - but each part of it is relatively simple. Regular expressions are powerful if you're happy to handle them, but unless something is complicated to express "longhand" I often find it easier to maintain the longer way. Just a personal preference though.

Blind guess: I see the last \r\n in the regex is not optional. Possible that your input file is missing a return character after the last line?
Additional note about sucking at regular expressions: there are some tools that will help you experiment with regular expressions, which might be useful, for example, to understand what's going on in this particular case. I always use Expresso, which among other things analyzes the structure of the regular expression you provide and explains what it does.

Another possibility is that you forgot to add canvas (Panel control) to another control so the chain of controls inside canvas is not displayed and you would maybe not see that the canvas itself doesn't display. Which guess is the best? :-)