TextBox for Live Search in Windows Forms

Question

How to create a Textbox which displays "search" in grey color when it is empty and standard behavior when user starts typing text into it?

check this link: http://csharpdotnetfreak.blogspot.com/2009/01/winforms-autocomplete-textbox-using-c.html — Waqas, Sep 13 '11 at 08:55
Try to look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4902565/watermark-textbox-in-winforms/4902969 — default locale, Sep 13 '11 at 08:55
DveExpress WinForm editors (TextEdit) have this functionality built-in already. Can be set through a property called NullText. — Youp Bernoulli, Sep 13 '11 at 10:03

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 13 '11 at 08:55

5

Do it via TextBox Events Enter and Leave and Attributes:

    private void textBox1_Leave(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if(textBox1.Text.Trim().Length == 0)
        {
            textBox1.Text = "Search";
            textBox1.ForeColor = Color.LightGray;
        }
    }

    private void textBox1_Enter(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        textBox1.Text = string.Empty;
    }

answered Sep 13 '11 at 08:55

Jan Christian Selke

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Don't forget to change ForeColor back. – default locale Sep 13 '11 at 08:57
By the way, this one will clear the textbox every time I reenter on it. It's too hardcore, isn't it? – default locale Sep 13 '11 at 08:59
@MAKKAM: sharp! I edited the code to prevent user input to be resetted every time the users (re)enters the textbox... – Youp Bernoulli Sep 13 '11 at 10:01

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 13 '11 at 08:59

1

See this thread at MSDN for a possible solution: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/csharpgeneral/thread/93a67793-6426-4d4f-be9d-a9b79725efc8

answered Sep 13 '11 at 08:59

321X

3,153
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TextBox for Live Search in Windows Forms

2 Answers2