WinForms TabControl

Question

I noticed that by programmatically selecting a Tab in the Tab control selects a control contained in the tab page selected.Is it possible to change this behaviour. I have a control in a tabpage that I do not want to be selected when the its tab page is selected from a button click. I have a simple form with a tab control and two tab pages. When button1 is clicked the tab page 2 is selected but so is the datagridview contained in that tab page.

    public partial class Form1 : Form
{
    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        dataGridView1.GotFocus += DataGridView1_GotFocus;
    }

    private void DataGridView1_GotFocus(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       //this event is called from button1_click
    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        tabControl1.SelectedTab = tabPage2;
    }
}

Answer 1

By default when you select a tab (or even when you start a form) the control which is the first in your tab order is automatically focused. I am assuming this is what is happening here.

You can solve this by simply unfocusing the datagridView in question. There are multiple ways to do this. Firstly you can set focus to the control that you wish to be selected instead of the dataGridView. This can be done by:

 myControl.Focus = True;

Or alternatively if you want non of the controls to be selected you can set the active control to Null:

 ActiveControl = NULL;

Note: ActiveControl is a property which contains the current active control.

As to where this code should be placed. That is totally dependent upon you. You can do it as soon as you change the tab in the button click event. This is what I would prefer.

I am sure there are other kludges as well to acheive the same. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Here is code to select tab

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // we can select tab by tab name
    tabControl1.SelectTab("tabPage2");
    tabControl1.SelectedIndex = 1;
    tabControl1.TabPages[0].Hide();
    tabControl1.TabPages[1].Show();
}