How to put a UserControl into Visual Studio toolBox

Question

I made a usercontrol in my project  and after building project  I need to put it in my toolbox  and use it as a common control  but i can t  the UserControl is in my project namespace  and I tried Choose Item in right click menu  but I didn t find a way to add it

User · Accepted Answer

I m assuming you re using VS2010  that s what you ve tagged the question as  I had problems getting them to add automatically to the toolbox as in VS2008 2005  There s actually an option to stop the toolbox auto populating   Go to Tools   Options   Windows Forms Designer   General   At the bottom of the list you ll find Toolbox   AutoToolboxPopulate which on a fresh install defaults to False  Set it true and then rebuild your solution   Hey presto they user controls in you solution should be automatically added to the toolbox  You might have to reload the solution as well

User · Answer

Using VS 2010   Let s say you have a Windows Forms project   You add a UserControl  say MyControl  to the project  and design it all up   Now you want to add it to your toolbox   As soon as the project is successfully built once  it will appear in your Framework Components   Right click the Toolbox to get the context menu  select  Choose Items      and browse to the name of your control  MyControl  under the   NET Framework Components  tab   Advantage over using dlls  you can edit the controls in the same project as your form  and the form will build with the new controls   However  the control will only be avilable to this project   Note  If the control has build errors  resolve them before moving on to the containing forms  or the designer has a heart attack

User · Answer

In my case  I couldn t see any of the controls in the project  Only when right clicking on toolBox and selecting  Show All  I saw them  but yet they were disabled     Changing Project type from Windows application to ClassLibrary made the fix

User · Answer

I had many users controls but one refused to show in the Toolbox  even though I rebuilt the solution and it was checked in the Choose Items    dialog    Solution     From Solution Explorer I Right-Clicked the offending user control file and selected Exclude From Project Rebuild the solution Right-Click the user control and select Include in Project  assuming you have the Show All Files enabled in the Solution Explorer    Note this also requires you have the AutoToolboxPopulate option enabled  As  DaveF answer suggests   Alternate Solution  I m not sure if this works  and I couldn t try it since I already resolved my issue  but if you unchecked the user control from the Choose Items    dialog  hit OK  then opened it back up and checked the user control  That might also work

User · Answer

There are a couple of ways    In your original Project  choose File Export template Then select ItemTemplate and follow the wizard   Move your UserControl to a separate ClassLibrary  and fix namespaces etc   Add a ref to the classlibrary from Projects that need it  Don t bother with the GAC or anything  just the DLL file     I would not advice putting a UserControl in the normal ToolBox  but it can be done  See the answer from  Arseny

User · Answer

I found that the user control must have a parameterless constructor or it won t show up in the list  at least that was true in vs2005

User · Answer

The issue with my designer was 32 vs 64 bit issue  I could add the control to tool box after following the instructions in Cannot add Controls from 64-bit Assemblies to the Toolbox or Use in Designers Within the Visual Studio IDE MS KB article

User · Answer

Basic qustion if you are using generics in your base control  If yes   lets say we have control   public class MyComboDropDown   ComboDropDownComon lt MyType gt        public MyComboDropDown           MyComboDropDown will not allow to open designer on it and will be not shown in Toolbox  Why  Because base control is not already compiled - when MyComboDropDown is complied  You can modify to this   public class MyComboDropDown   MyComboDropDownBase       public MyComboDropDown          public class MyComboDropDownBase   ComboDropDownComon lt MyType gt         Than after rebuild  and reset toolbox it should be able to see MyComboDropDown in designer and also in Toolbox

User · Answer

Right-click on toolbar then click on  choose item  in context menu  A dialog with registered components pops up  in this dialog click  Browse  to select your assembly with the usercontrol you want to use   PS  This assembly should be registered before

User · Answer

Recompiling did the trick for me

[c#] How to put a UserControl into Visual Studio toolBox

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