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.
Related
I have a windows form in C# project that keeps Student Info. I caught the image:
I want to add data with sequential order as follows but when I enter data to Surname textbox, TAB button jumps to E-Mail textbox, then Phone Number textbox and lastly to Date of Birth DateTimePicker.
I made all control's TabStop property "False" on the form except these textboxes. And I arranged their TabOrder via Properties Section as follows 0,1,2.. as I intented. But the order followed as I wrote above. Then I opened Tab Order function via "View" on menu strip.. I clicked all controls which I wanted to use in order, but no use. The form and Tab button act as before. I caught Tab Order function image below:
What shall I do now?
TabIndex is important for controls which are siblings of the same parent. However, if your TextBox and ComboBox controls are each inside different parents then their parent controls must have the proper TabIndex.
In the Windows Forms Designer you can see which controls are children of which panels by bringing up the Document Outline. Go to View -> Other Windows -> Document Outline.
If each TextBox or ComboBox is directly inside a parent then its TabIndex doesn't matter, it can be 0. It's the parent (and possibly the parent's parent's) TabIndex which needs to be in order.
Now that we have VS 2019. Simply go to form.cs[design], click "View" tab at the top of the page and select "Tab Order". This will allow you to click on the form elements in order of which you want them to be tabbed to. Any items not selected will not be tabbable(I think I made this word up). Once complete, click "Tab Order" again to exit view.
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.
I have six tabs on my Windows application. I need to put tab #6 after tab #2, how can i do it?
I couldn't drag the tab to the location i want! The 5 tabs are full of controls that took long time to name and design. Any idea how to move last tab and place it after 3rd tab?
In order to arrange the tabs in a TabControl, access the property dialog for the TabControl and find the "TabPages" property. Clicking on the little button next to the value field will display a dialog which will allow you to control the properties and position of each tab in the TabControl.
TabPages Property http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/6334/tabeditor.png
Although an answer is there: I thought this picture may speak few more words ;)
Click on Tab Control
Go to Properties Window
Click on Tab Page as highlighted in blue
Voila! The TabPage Collection Editor allows you to perform what you need. It's intuitive.