When I press TAB the next textbox is not being selected

Question

I have some textboxes and I arranged the TabIndexes BUT. When I TAB from textbox1 to textbox2, I want the text in textbox2 to be Selected. I tried:

if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Tab)
{
   textbox2.SelectAll();
}

But it doesn't work. How can I do that ?

Answer 1

How about TextBox.SelectAll() on the focus event or something.

Answer 2

There is an event named Enter on TextBox, in this event select the text from begining (0) to end (text lenght)

private void textBox2_Enter(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    textBox2.SelectionStart = 0;
    textBox2.SelectionLength = textBox2.Text.Length;
    //or also
    //textBox2.SelectAll()
}

Answer 3

In Windows Forms and WPF:

 textbox.SelectionStart = 0; textbox.SelectionLength =
 textbox.Text.Length;

In ASP.Net:

textBox.Attributes.Add("onfocus","this.select();");

For more detail please Click Here

Answer 4

You should select the text when the textbox got the focus.

In WPF, you should react to the GotKeyboardFocus event.
In Winforms, you should react to the GotFocus event.

In both cases, the code to execute is simply textbox2.SelectAll(); without the check for the tab key.

Answer 5

I had the same issue in Windows Forms and vb.net (it can be probably easily converted to c#) and I solved it in the following way:

1. Set the form KeyPreview property to true.

Gets or sets a value indicating whether the form will receive key events before the event is passed to the control that has focus.

This allows you to handle key events only for the form instead of for every textbox. Obviously if you have only one textbox this will save you no work.

2. Handle the form KeyUp event

It looks like the KeyDown and KeyPressed events do not fire for the Tab key, but unexpectedly, the KeyUp does...

I leave you the code I used on the KeyUp event:

Private Sub MyForm_KeyUp(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.KeyEventArgs) Handles MyBase.KeyUp
    // Do nothing if key other than TAB is pressed
    If Not e.KeyCode = Keys.Tab Then Exit Sub

    // Search for the control that currently has the focus
    // As we are only interested in doing something when the focus is in textboxes, we do not even search the focus for other controls
    Dim focused_textbox As TextBox = Nothing
    For Each p As TextBox In GetAllTextBoxes(Me) //GetAllTextBoxes is a function that gets a list with all the textboxes for the form passed as a parameter.
        If p.Focused Then
            focused_textbox = p
            Exit For
        End If
    Next

    // If no textbox has the focus, no actions are required.
    If focused_textbox Is Nothing Then Exit Sub

    // If the textbox with the focus does not have any content, nothing is to be selected....
    If String.IsNullOrEmpty(focused_textbox.Text) Then Exit Sub

    // select all the textbox contents
    focused_textbox.SelectAll()
    /* I've also seen arroun the following sollution, instead of the 'focused_textbox.SelectAll()', but I have not tried it, as SelectAll worked perfect for me
    focused_textbox.SelectionStart = 0
    focused_textbox.SelectionLength = focused_textbox.Text.Length
    */
End Sub

I also give you my 'GetAllTextBoxes' function, it might probably not be the most efficient way but it works.

Function GetAllTextBoxes(ByVal control_or_form As Object) As List(Of TextBox)
    Dim l As List(Of TextBox) = New List(Of TextBox)

    // Fill control_collection with child controls of the control_or_form 
    Dim control_collection As List(Of Control) = New List(Of Control)
    If TypeOf control_or_form Is Windows.Forms.Form Then
        Dim form As Windows.Forms.Form = CType(control_or_form, Windows.Forms.Form)
        If form.HasChildren Then
            For Each c As Control In form.Controls
                control_collection.Add(c)
            Next
        Else
            Return l
        End If
    ElseIf TypeOf control_or_form Is Windows.Forms.Control Then
        Dim control As Windows.Forms.Control = CType(control_or_form, Windows.Forms.Control)
        If control.HasChildren Then
            For Each c As Control In control.Controls
                control_collection.Add(c)
            Next
        Else
            Return l
        End If
    Else
        Return l
    End If

   // At this point if control_or_form is not a control or a form, or if it has no children, the function had already returned an empty list meaning 'this object has no child textboxes'
   // Now, for all the child controls, store them into the list if they are TextBoxes and, if not, search more TextBoxes within its childs if it has any.
    For Each child_c As Control In control_collection
        If TypeOf child_c Is TextBox Then
            l.Add(child_c)
        End If

        If child_c.HasChildren Then
            l.AddRange(GetAllTextBoxes(child_c)) //Here we see why this function needs to allow input form and control at the same time 
        End If
    Next

    Return l
End Function

Hope this helps somebody ;)

Answer 6

Try this:

textbox2.SelectionStart = 0;
textbox2.SelectionLength = textbox2.Text.Length;