How to change the background color of a rich text box when it is disabled?

Badr picture Badr · Dec 22, 2009 · Viewed 30.4k times · Source

Whenever I set the RichTextBox.Enabled property to false, its background color is automatically set to gray as it is set to the color in system color which is set in the control panel. How can I change its color to black even if I set it to disabled?

Answer

Mikael Svenson picture Mikael Svenson · Dec 22, 2009

See: How to change the font color of a disabled TextBox?

[Edit - code example added]

richTextBox.TabStop = false;
richTextBox.ReadOnly = true;
richTextBox.BackColor = Color.DimGray;
richTextBox.Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
richTextBox.Enter += richTextBox_Enter;

private void richTextBox_Enter(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // you need to set the focus somewhere else. Eg a label.
    SomeOtherControl.Focus();
}

or as en extension method (I realized you don't have to put it in readonly since the Enter event catches any input):

public static class MyExtensions
{
    public static void Disable( this Control control, Control focusTarget )
    {
        control.TabStop = false;
        control.BackColor = Color.DimGray;
        control.Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
        control.Enter += delegate { focusTarget.Focus(); };
    }
}