DataGridView keydown event not working in C#

Question

DataGridView keydown event is not working when I am editing text inside a cell.

I am assigning shortcut Alt+S to save the data, it works when cell is not in edit mode, but if it is in edit mode below code is not working

private void dataGridView1_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
 {
    if (e.KeyData == (Keys.Alt | Keys.S))
    {
         //save data
    }
 }

Answer 1

Whenever a cell is in edit mode, its hosted control is receiving the KeyDown event instead of the parent DataGridView that contains it. That's why your keyboard shortcut is working whenever a cell is not in edit mode (even if it is selected), because your DataGridView control itself receives the KeyDown event. However, when you are in edit mode, the edit control contained by the cell is receiving the event, and nothing happens because it doesn't have your custom handler routine attached to it.

I have spent way too much time tweaking the standard DataGridView control to handle edit commits the way I want it to, and I found that the easiest way to get around this phenomenon is by subclassing the existing DataGridView control and overriding its ProcessCmdKey function. Whatever custom code that you put in here will run whenever a key is pressed on top of the DataGridView, regardless of whether or not it is in edit mode.

For example, you could do something like this:

class MyDataGridView : System.Windows.Forms.DataGridView
{
    protected override bool ProcessCmdKey(ref System.Windows.Forms.Message msg, System.Windows.Forms.Keys keyData)
    {

        MessageBox.Show("Key Press Detected");

        if ((keyData == (Keys.Alt | Keys.S)))
        {
            //Save data
        }

        return base.ProcessCmdKey(ref msg, keyData);
    }
}

Also see related, though somewhat older, article: How to trap keystrokes in controls by using Visual C#