Cannot move controls with the mouse in Windows Form Designer

Question

I recently installed Visual Studio 2013 Professional and found that in the project type of a Windows Forms application, I cannot move controls on the form in design mode. I checked several alternatives and found the following:

• Controls can be moved using the keyboard
• You can change the controls by dragging key points onto the outline of the control
• Controls can be aligned using commands in the Tools menu.
• You can move controls by manually setting the Location field in the designer properties grid.
• Controls can be docked
• Controls cannot be moved with the mouse.

In addition, as you can see in the image below, the cross icon indicating that the controls are movable does not appear on any controls.

I tried the following but still could not fix the problem:

• Created a new project and solution (same issue)
• New form created (same problem)
• Checked that the Locked property of both the form and the controls is set to False
• Checked that the form inherits from Form (as expected, as this is a standard installation and the first time I used it)
• Googled for help (nothing worked)

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

It took some time, but I finally found a workaround, if not an answer. As it happens, periodically my computer will stop letting me drag and drop anything. The solution to this is to press Esc (escape), which instantly restores functionality.

Answer 2

In my case, I had to change the Dock property to None .

Answer 3

I just found myself in a similar, but slightly different situation - I could drag all the controls without the cross icon, such as buttons, but could not drag any control that had the cross icon, such as group fields and panels. One way to solve the problem was to use the arrow keys to move the controls, but only restarting the computer fixed the problem. The solution posted by Brett Wolfington does not work in my case.

Answer 4

Found a solution !!

I had the same problem: Holding the mouse button and trying to move an element without effects!

My solution: Try clicking the mouse button to move the item very slowly - it works! I think this may be due to mouse speed / acceleration settings. I changed them to the maximum. I think VS has problems with this. When I move the mouse slowly at the beginning, then it works just fine!

Answer 5

Answer a slightly different question, but my Google search brought me here, so maybe this will help someone else.

If the movement does not work, including from the keyboard, check the "locked" property. It was for me in the project of colleagues, so I did not know that he blocked it.

The controls also have a tiny lock icon, so if you look carefully you will notice.

Answer 6

None of these solutions helped me. Here are the steps that helped me:

1. Close Visual Studio
2. Delete the AppData folder in Visual Studio, usually at C: \ Users \ username \ AppData \ Local \ Microsoft \ VisualStudio. My folder was called 15.0_b148b13d, but your folder may have a similar name.

After uninstalling Visual Studio, it took some time to initialize, but I was finally able to drag and drop the controls.

Answer 7

I had this problem and tried to solve it using some of the above methods, including pressing Esc , rebooting and deleting the folder in AppData, but none of them helped me.

I have a dual-screen setup, and eventually I noticed that if Visual Studio starts on screen 1 and then moves to screen 2, after clicking and dragging the components back to their original position. After moving the Visual Studio window back to Component Screen 1, click and drag as usual. I am not sure about the reason for this, since this has never been a problem ...

Answer 8

This seems to be a drawing error. The controls are actually moving, but before you see this, there is a slight time delay.