I have a Windows Form with 27 controls, but I need the tab key to cycle between only four of these controls. Every time the tab key is pressed, it should only move the focus between these 4 controls.
How do I do this?
Set the TabIndex of the controls you wish to navigate through. For the others, set TabStop to false.
This article describes how to set the tab index on Windows Forms controls.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bd16a8cw(v=vs.90).aspx
According to that article, setting the TabStop property to false, on the controls that you want to be ignored by TAB, should achieve your objective.
For the 4 controls that you do want to be affected by pressing TAB, use the TaxbIndex property to set the values from 0 to 3.
Related
What determines the tab order when more controls have the same tabindex property?
For example, after adding a texbox to an empty form the texbox's tabindex was 0. By duplicating the texbox (Ctrl + mouse drag) the new textbox had tabindex 0 too. Then I added a button and its tabindex was 1.
After running the program the focus was on the 2nd textbox.
Then I changed button's tabindex to 0 so after that all controls had tabindex = 0 and after running the program the focus was on the button which was added last.
Does that mean that in case of multiple controls with the same tabindex property the tab order will be the opposite of order of adding the controls to the form? Seems as the tab order of the controls which share the same tabindex is just the opposite of their order of appearance in Form.Designer.cs file.
Or is it that button control always has priority over textbox control when they both share the same tabindex?
Is that documented somewhere?
From MSDN Control.TabIndex Property
A tab index can consist of any valid integer greater than or equal to
zero, lower numbers being earlier in the tab order. If more than one
control on the same parent control has the same tab index, the z-order
of the controls determines the order to cycle through the controls.
And a bit of a nuance as well:
For a control to be included in the tab order, its TabStop property
must be set to true.
So, you're seeing controls with the same TabIndex value tab in reverse order from the code behind file due to the z-index value.
I have a WinForm program. In one screen it has several ComboBoxes, TextBoxes, and Buttons. How can I make it so that when the user presses tab, it will go through the fields in sequential order. Meaning from top to bottom? Or we can say "In my defined order"? So, for example, it starts with TextBox1, and then when the user presses Tab, it will go to the next TextBox, and when Tab is pressed again, will go to Button1, etc. etc.
Not sure if it’s possible, but for some reason pressing tab jumps all over the place. What defines the "tab"? what logic does it use to make it jump to the next field?
The TabIndex property of each control defines the tab order within a container (Form, GroupBox, Panel, etc). If you are working in the Visual Studio Designer, you can use the View --> Tab Order menu item to view/edit the tab sequence.
Each control has a property called TabIndex. When a user presses the Tab key, Windows cycles through each control in the order of the tab index. If two controls have the same TabIndex, they are selected in the order in which the controls were added to the Forms Controls collection.
It is also worth noting that if you have a control that can contain a group of controls within it's Controls collection (i.e. GroupBox), the tab processing engine will give tab focus to the parent control and then cycle through all of the internal controls, in their internal sorted order. This means that all child TabIndex values can be maintained independently of all other controls that are in the same collection as the parent control.
You need to use the TabIndex propert on the control. Be aware that according to the documentation, you must set the TabStop property to true in order for it to be included in the tab ordering.
You need to define the TabIndex of each control. There is a button in the designer toolbar to make it easier (I don't remember the name, but you should find it easily... it's probably something like "Tab Order"). Click this button, then click each control on the form in turn.
Each control has a property called "TabIndex". These will by default just be incrementing as you create items. You can set these manually.
Set the TabIndex: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa984423%28v=vs.71%29.aspx
Please check out TabIndex property.
so I have started from 0 and defining tabindex for the controls on my form but at run time it is all messed up. the form is a little complex tho. it has horizontal and vertical splitters and panels, group boxes and some older VB 6.0 activeX controls which is a Tree control inside them. even if i do it programmatically and read previewkeydown eventg and say if it is TAB then control2.Focus() it is still working wrong. so frustrating. any thoughts? ..there are also labels on the form which do not need tab so I have defined 0 for their index.
How are you setting it?
If you are in visual studio with the form in design view select view -> tab order and then click on each item in the order you want them.
Usually works for me.
The reason is that the controls are in different Containers. Suppose you've got panel1.TabIndex = 0 and panel2.TabIndex = 1, then in panel2, textBox1.TabIndex = 0, in panel1, textBox2.TabIndex = 1. At runtime, textBox1 comes before textBox2 because its panel comes first!
As kerry said, use view->tab order to see the complete hierarchy of tab orders.
I'm mentioning this because I haven't seen it in any of the winforms tab order threads that I have found on stackoverflow.
If you have multiple panels, you change your panel tab order by clicking on the Panel, going to properties, and then you change the TabIndex to whatever you want. This will allow you to navigate from panel to panel in the order that you want. Then within each panel, follow the recommended steps listed above using view > tab order and click on each cell in the order that you want to set.
Follow the steps below:
Set the TabIndex property to DIRECT CHILD containers and controls in your form or container, either using the View > TabOrder utility or directly from the properties window. Completely ignore the TabStop property of containers, which defaults to false even it's very important.
Repeat step 1 with each container.
I create an user control that has some textbox and buttons.the problem is when I use tab to traverse in My form when my usercontrol get focus the focus go inside of user control and buttons insid if it would focus.How I can simply go to next control after my user control not inside it?
thanks
If the controls have Focusable CanHaveFocus TabStop sort of properties, set them to false.
Also set the TabIndex properties of those controls to 0. I'm sure that the controls will be ghosts in terms of getting tab focus.
Set TabStop property on your custom user control elements which you want to exclude (eg. your button) to false.
We have a form and textboxes in it. All of control's tabindex are set correctly and TabStop = true.
When some textbox is focused and when I press tab, focus is not set on next textbox.
Note : Controls are in the panel and its TabStop = true
Set TabStop for the panel to false
Make sure that the tab indexes are like the following:
Remember that you have a nice tool to set the Tab indexes in Visual Studio:
My solution: Containers must have the tab numbers set correctly even though they are not stops. Finally working!
Old post and nothing here helped me.
Tried everything including to force .Select() e .Focus() on the controls.
For some reason taborder was behaving all in a funny order, even disabling/setting visible = false on one control other orders was wrong as if the tab index was working in reverse.
Only thing help was de Document Outline, you can open that box with Ctrl + W, U or by the menu on VS.
VIEW -> Other Windows -> Document Outline
It ill show your controls in a tree fashion.
Just drag the controls to the correct order, it ill affect the tab order.
Word of warning: I struggled a bit with it because dragging (in the Document Outline box) some controls inside a panel caused them to move to the top upper corner of the panel (in the Designer). Just dragged them back to the position in the Designer.
For some reason the order the controls are show in the Outline Document box affects tab behaviour in nasty ways.
Have you set the tab order correctly? Select the form in designer view and select View > Tab Order to set the correct order.
Set TabStop for individual controls. Remove it from panel.
Perhaps the TextBox that you can't tab from is a multiline TextBox with AcceptsTab set to true? This would cause the TextBox to consume the tab key itself.
I know this is an old post but I've just had a similar issue and thought I'd share my solution.
Check that you have set the TabIndex before adding the control to it's parents Control collection.
I noticed for the controls that were being skipped I was adding them to the parent before setting their TabIndex. Once I set the TabIndex and then added them to the collection they behaved as expected.
One thing to note is that Visual Studio showed the tab order I wanted but at run time it did not behave that way.