Press Enter to move to next control

Question

I have a few TextBox on the WinForm. I would like the focus to move to the next control when Enter key is pressed? Whenever a textbox gains control, it will also select the text, so that any editing will replace the current one.

What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

Tab as Enter: create a user control which inherits textbox, override the KeyPress method. If the user presses enter you can either call SendKeys.Send("{TAB}") or System.Windows.Forms.Control.SelectNextControl(). Note you can achieve the same using the KeyPress event.

Focus Entire text: Again, via override or events, target the GotFocus event and then call TextBox.Select method.

Answer 2

A couple of code examples in C# using SelectNextControl.

The first moves to the next control when ENTER is pressed.

    private void Control_KeyUp( object sender, KeyEventArgs e )
    {
        if( (e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter) || (e.KeyCode == Keys.Return) )
        {
            this.SelectNextControl( (Control)sender, true, true, true, true );
        }
    }

The second uses the UP and DOWN arrows to move through the controls.

    private void Control_KeyUp( object sender, KeyEventArgs e )
    {
        if( e.KeyCode == Keys.Up )
        {
            this.SelectNextControl( (Control)sender, false, true, true, true );
        }
        else if( e.KeyCode == Keys.Down )
        {
            this.SelectNextControl( (Control)sender, true, true, true, true );
        }
    }

See MSDN SelectNextControl Method