2 forms

Question

How do I interact with elements on another form. I want buttons and other controls on form 1 to tell form 2 what to show and do. Thanks

rohmanovich · Answer

Thank you both. This helped a lot.

Johan.Peeters · Answer

There is a simple solution for your problem.. What you have to do is create an object of form 2 in form 1. Next you have to make the components on form 2 public accessible. example: Create a first startup form named Form1. Add a button named buttonStart and a textbox named textboxInput. Create a second form named Form2 with only a label named labelOutput on it. Change the following line of code from private to public. => public System.Windows.Forms.Label labelOutput; Double click the start button and add following code. => private void buttonStart_Click(object sender System.EventArgs e) { Form2 myForm = new Form2(); myForm.labelOutput.Text = textBoxInput.Text; myForm.Show(); } remark: If you use a different namespaces for each of the forms you have to reference to the correct assembly and add a using statement. This is the simple but not so clean way. It is also possible to use delegates and events to trigger certain actions on one form and then start actions on an other. However this is rather complex best is to read some articles or a manual about events and delegates.

Ben · Answer

Are you opening form 2 from form 1 ? If so you could try something like the following (this assumes that you have a button named btnMessage on form 1  and a textBox named txtDisplay on form 2 ); 1) on form 2 add this code: //needs to be public to access from form 1 public void displayMessage(string currentMessage) { txtDisplay.Text = currentMessage; } 2) on form 1 under the btnMessage click event add: btnMessage_Click(object sender SystemEventArgs e) { //next line assumes that when you created a new instance of form 2 you named it myForm2 myForm2.displayMessage(btnMessage was clicked!); } 3) of course you could modify this an infinite number of ways the main point being the public keyword in the method on form 2 . Does this help? :)