How can I make a ComboBox non-editable in .NET?

c# .net winforms combobox
Cory Engebretson picture Cory Engebretson · Sep 17, 2008 · Viewed 207.9k times · Source

I want to have a "select-only" ComboBox that provides a list of items for the user to select from. Typing should be disabled in the text portion of the ComboBox control.

My initial googling of this turned up an overly complex, misguided suggestion to capture the KeyPress event.

Answer

Cory Engebretson picture Cory Engebretson · Sep 17, 2008

To make the text portion of a ComboBox non-editable, set the DropDownStyle property to "DropDownList". The ComboBox is now essentially select-only for the user. You can do this in the Visual Studio designer, or in C# like this:

stateComboBox.DropDownStyle = ComboBoxStyle.DropDownList;

Link to the documentation for the ComboBox DropDownStyle property on MSDN.

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