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Unable to select controls in my form

It started recently (not too sure what caused the change unfortunately), but I can no longer select controls in my form. My reading about this uncovered some possible explanations, including:

  • You run your program in debug mode
  • Your form is derived from another class where everything is private.
  • Your controls are locked.

For (1) no, it definitely doesn't work, and for (2) my form is derived from DevComponents.DotNetBar.RibbonForm. For (3) no, they are not "locked" (I tried to lock and then unlock if some state got stuck in the designer, but without the dice). The controls are in my form, not the base class form, and the instances are not private (I specifically made them public to test this), and they worked just fine before.

So what can I do? I can select a control, for example ComboBox, from the "Window Properties" drop-down list, change its properties, etc. But when I choose, nothing is chosen in the designer. I can select the shape (along its border) and resize it in the designer. I can add a new control, such as a shortcut, and interact well with it in the designer, so this happened to my existing controls.

I am sure that this is either something spectacularly dumb, or Visual Studio 2012 in the wind.

Is anyone

Edit: Buttoned up the decision and brought it home. It is cleaned and rebuilt, and it works great in the designer. I guess the problem is with my installation at work, anyway.

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c # winforms visual-studio-2012
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13 answers

Well, I kind of solved the problem, although I don't know what the real reason was. In my program, I refer to the dll devcomponents.dotnetbar. I deleted the link and then added it again, rebuilt the program and now everything works in the designer.

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The problem may occur if a new version of DevComponents.DotNetBar is installed, and the old version still refers to a separate library folder.

The application and all DLLs referenced by DotNetBar must be redirected to the latest version.

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Right-click the form and uncheck Lock Controls .

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The main reason for this problem is that older versions of the components are used in the project, and a newer version of the component is installed on the machine. 9 times out of 10, the project still points to a component in the PAC. Remove the component link and add it again from the newly installed component location, and everything should work fine.

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I had the same problem with DotnetBar, resolved it by adding to the project

link DevComponents.DotNetBar.Design.DLL
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I had the same situation, but closing and reopening my project solved the problem

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I had the same problem after transferring the project to another computer. I did not install DotNetBar on the new machine and just copied DevComponents.DotNetBar.dll. I resolved it by also copying DevComponents.DotNetBar.Design.dll (contained in the installation directory of the old DotNetBar computer) to the new computer and referring to it in the project.

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I had this problem and it was caused after I mistakenly played with my "using" and "namespaces" in a blind attempt to get rid of the error. I saved each .cs file one by one, and then closed VS and opened it again. Presto, the little castles have disappeared.

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Resetting the toolbar (right-click on the toolbar) and then “reinstalling” the new toolbars did the trick for me. This seems to be a bug in Visual Studio.

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I had the same problem, you can ctrl+a select everything and then move controls somewhere, no matter where. Now you can select to separate them again.

I had a problem by dragging the tab down so that I could see two codes at the same time.

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I know this is an old post, but in case it helps someone else, my version of this problem was not possible to select the controls on the bookmark. Sending the tab back did not help. But I found that I can highlight the controls by selecting them in the properties window, and then hovering over the control arrows and right-clicking, I could bring the controls forward.

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Just Closing the current Soln and Opening again solves this problem. It could be caused by some hidden choices in other forms!

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A common problem is using links that no longer exist. For me, I had several versions of the Infragistics controls and removed all but the latest version. At least one of my links pointed to a DLL that did not exist. Therefore, the apparent removal and re-addition substantially indicate links to the correct (or existing) DLLs.

In addition, one of the symptoms of this problem is that the labels for the controls are displayed in a window under the dialog / form.

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