[c#] How to make a form close when pressing the escape key?

I have a small form, which comes up when I press a button in a Windows Forms application.

I want to be able to close the form by pressing the escape key. How could I do this? I am not sure of the event to use. form_closing?

If you have a cancel button on your form, you can set the Form.CancelButton property to that button and then pressing escape will effectively 'click the button'.

If you don't have such a button, check out the Form.KeyPreview property.

The best way i found is to override the "ProcessDialogKey" function. This way canceling a open control is still possible because the function is only called when no other control uses the pressed Key.

This is the same behaviour as when setting a CancelButton. Using the KeyDown Event fires always and thus the form would close even when it should cancel the edit of an open editor.

protected override bool ProcessDialogKey(Keys keyData)
{
    if (Form.ModifierKeys == Keys.None && keyData == Keys.Escape)
    {
        this.Close();
        return true;
    }
    return base.ProcessDialogKey(keyData);
}

Button cancelBTN = new Button();
cancelBTN.Size = new Size(0, 0);
cancelBTN.TabStop = false;
this.Controls.Add(cancelBTN);
this.CancelButton = cancelBTN;

Paste this code into the "On Key Down" Property of your form, also make sure you set "Key Preview" Property to "Yes".

If KeyCode = vbKeyEscape Then DoCmd.Close acForm, "YOUR FORM NAME"