Why are some textboxes not accepting Control + A shortcut to select all by default

Question

I have found a few textboxes here and there in my program that accepts Control+A shortcut to select the entire text "by default" with "no coding".

I don't know what additional information I have to give here to enable it for all of them, as I find absolutely no difference between these textboxes. They are all simple dragged and dropped textboxes.

Note: I'm not talking about this piece of code:

if (e.Control && e.KeyCode == Keys.A)
{
    textBox1.SelectAll();
}

I want selection by default... or is there anyway to change textbox property so that textboxes accept all default windows shortcuts?

Everything else (Control + Z, Control + X, Control + C, Control + V) works by default! Why not Control + A?

Update: The text boxes that accepted Ctrl+A by default were masked textboxes, not the regular one. And at that point I was with .NET 2.0. But I guess the original problem was something else, as I can see Ctrl+A working fine by default in .NET 2.0 code.

My experience is that no text-boxes respond to Ctrl+A by default; I have had to implement it myself (as per your code). — Polyfun, May 04 '11 at 16:00
@Heandel, sorry for belated reply, I was out of station unexpectedly. I think there's no need of examples as mostly textboxes doesnt accept Control + A by default. Actually very few does without coding even. May be for that I need to deliver examples. Which I dunno how to do. — nawfal, May 05 '11 at 06:46
@ShellShock, yes thats right. But some textboxes in my application does!! How on earth is that.. — nawfal, May 05 '11 at 06:48
Can anybody provide me a neat shortcut with which I can just tweak the textbox property in GUI section so that it accepts all default Windows shortcuts. — nawfal, May 05 '11 at 06:49
It's fixed .NET 4.6.1, credits go to: [link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16197915/how-can-i-allow-ctrla-with-textbox-in-winform#comment54795118_29957334) It works with ReadOnly and MultiLine = true — ArieKanarie, Jan 23 '17 at 11:17

score 67 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 01 '19 at 16:10

67

You might be looking for the ShortcutsEnabled property. Setting it to true would allow your text boxes to implement the Ctrl+A shortcut (among others). From the documentation:

Use the ShortcutsEnabled property to enable or disable the following shortcut key combinations:

CTRL+Z

CTRL+E

CTRL+C

CTRL+Y

CTRL+X

CTRL+BACKSPACE

CTRL+V

CTRL+DELETE

CTRL+A

SHIFT+DELETE

CTRL+L

SHIFT+INSERT

CTRL+R

However, the documentation states:

The TextBox control does not support the CTRL+A shortcut key when the Multiline property value is true.

You will probably have to use another subclass of TextBoxBase, such as RichTextBox, for that to work.

edited Mar 01 '19 at 16:10

TylerH

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answered May 05 '11 at 07:03

Frédéric Hamidi

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@Frédéric Hamidi, thanks. But to my best of knowledge, I've turned it on. Still it didnt work i guess. Let me check again. Reach back to you soon :) – nawfal May 05 '11 at 07:11
2

@Frédéric Hamidi, yes I'd already turned it on for all textboxes. Still in my program only few textboxes accepts Control + A shortcut by default. In the link you gave, it says "The TextBox control does not support shortcut keys." What does this mean? – nawfal May 05 '11 at 07:59
1

@nawfal, nice catch, I did not see that note. It means the shortcut keys are supported by `RichTextBox` (and possibly `MaskedTextBox`), but not by `TextBox`. I'll update my answer accordingly. – Frédéric Hamidi May 05 '11 at 08:08
@Frédéric Hamidi, yes, my textboxes which accepts Control + A are masked textboxes. Now i get why certain textboxes accept Control + A while others not. Why would microsoft let normal textboxes accept all other shortcuts but not Control + A? !! Can anyone tell me how to fix this with one method (since I have many textboxes in my program) – nawfal May 05 '11 at 08:45
3

@nawfal, that's probably because `TextBox` wraps the native Windows `EDIT` control, which only supports a subset of the shortcuts. One way to solve the problem would be to derive your own class from `TextBox`, implement the `Ctrl+A` shortcut there and use that class throughout your project. – Frédéric Hamidi May 05 '11 at 08:53
@Frédéric Hamidi, I'm too naive to do all that. If only I had seen a working code, I could do that.. – nawfal May 05 '11 at 09:18
@nawfal, the code in [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/291792/win32-select-all-on-edit-ctrl-textbox/291798#291798) should do the trick, then. – Frédéric Hamidi May 05 '11 at 09:30
@Frédéric Hamidi, let me see to that! :) – nawfal May 05 '11 at 09:31
@Frédéric Hamidi, can you tell me how to make my own textbox by deriving from main textbox class and using through out? – nawfal May 05 '11 at 10:13
@nawfal, well, basically you'd do `public class YourTextBox : TextBox` and implement the `OnKeyDown()` override. That said, knowing how to derive classes is a pretty important asset in object-oriented languages, so I'd suggest you brush up your skills on that topic, possibly starting [there](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173149.aspx). – Frédéric Hamidi May 05 '11 at 10:26
@Frédéric Hamidi, well let me.. But I need to know what needs to be written below the `OnKeyDown` method :) – nawfal May 05 '11 at 10:38
4

Terrible feature of multiline text boxes but at least swapping in the RichTextBox is easy – Alan Macdonald Aug 29 '14 at 15:38
3

The TextBox control also seems to fail Ctrl+A if you enable the ReadOnly property. I don't see why readonly would disallow handy text selection... – Nyerguds Feb 10 '16 at 20:27
The question is "Why" not "How". – Bitterblue Apr 22 '20 at 08:36

score 26 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 11 '14 at 12:56

26

Indeed CTRL + A will not work unless you add something like this:

  private void textBox1_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
  {
      if (e.Control && (e.KeyCode == Keys.A))
      {
          if (sender != null)
               ((TextBox)sender).SelectAll();
          e.Handled = true;
      }
  }

edited Feb 11 '14 at 12:56

Stefan Steiger

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answered May 22 '13 at 19:30

Junior Mayhé

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3

This is exactly what is mentioned in question already. I'm looking for a solution that avoids this. – nawfal May 24 '13 at 16:09
1

I agree, it would be nice to have a cleaner solution when dealing with keyboard – Junior Mayhé Jun 10 '14 at 20:58
2

Still, this does it pretty good for me, and for anyone who is okay with retyping that again and again, and don't want to use any confusing methods or third-party ways. – Kaitlyn Aug 02 '15 at 16:42
2

For some odd reason this gives an error beep in addition to selecting everything. Edit: Adding `e.SuppressKeyPress = true;` fixes that :) – Nyerguds Feb 10 '16 at 20:15
This should work for ComboBox with DropDownStyle.DropDown, since it does not have ShortcustsEnabled property. – sjlewis Mar 08 '16 at 13:08

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

4

This answer worked for me in a similar question (which isn't marked as accepted)

protected override bool ProcessCmdKey(ref Message msg, Keys keyData)
{
    const int WM_KEYDOWN = 0x100;
    var keyCode = (Keys) (msg.WParam.ToInt32() &
                          Convert.ToInt32(Keys.KeyCode));
    if ((msg.Msg == WM_KEYDOWN && keyCode == Keys.A) 
        && (ModifierKeys == Keys.Control) 
        && txtYourTextBox.Focused)
    {
        txtYourTextBox.SelectAll();
        return true;
    }            
    return base.ProcessCmdKey(ref msg, keyData);
}

Original Post: How can I allow ctrl+a with TextBox in winform?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Community

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answered Mar 13 '14 at 23:13

TheJonz

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Unless you add a method for actually automatically finding the selected control, this only works on one single TextBox, though. – Nyerguds Feb 10 '16 at 20:24
This should work for ComboBox with DropDownStyle.DropDown, too. – sjlewis Mar 08 '16 at 13:07

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 02 '13 at 12:51

2

Make sure that Application.EnableVisualStyles(); is not commented out in static void Main()

That can disable Ctrl+A

answered Oct 02 '13 at 12:51

Jon Dosmann

667
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20

huh what a coincidence, that's exactly what happened in my case – user1306322 Aug 10 '15 at 19:13

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 18 '14 at 03:28

This question wants an answer that cannot be given in the form of code avoidance, as the Win32 API at the core of the other methods doesn't allow it. If other methods DO allow it, they are just writing the code for you. :)

So the real question is: What is the smallest, neatest way to do it? This worked for me:

First, there is no need to handle WM_KEYDOWN! And no need to test for the Ctrl key already down either. I know that most examples here (and CodeProject and many other places) all say there is, but it does not cure the beep that results whenever a WM_CHAR arises that is not handled.

Instead, try handling WM_CHAR and doing the Ctrl+A selection there:

LRESULT CALLBACK Edit_Prc(HWND hwnd,UINT msg,WPARAM wParam,LPARAM lParam){
  if(msg==WM_CHAR&&wParam==1){SendMessage(hwnd,EM_SETSEL,0,-1); return 1;}
  else return CallWindowProc((void*)WPA,hwnd,msg,wParam,lParam);
}

Remember to subclass the EDIT control to this Edit_Prc() using WPA=SetWindowLong(...) where WPA is the window procedure address for CallWindowProc(...)

Very unclear. You might want to actually show how that's used. — Nyerguds, Feb 10 '16 at 20:26
I had that in a less descriptive form in another page, and a guy said it worked for him... So the clues are all there. Basically, it's subclassing an edit box, handling the Ctrl+A event, then passing the control back to the inbuilt Windows behaviour for that edit box as normal. Doing this allows us to augment the standard behaviour without rewriting its code, or to override undesirables, like that beep. — , Nov 04 '16 at 23:41

Why are some textboxes not accepting Control + A shortcut to select all by default

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