Question

How can I make the close button on a form effectively act as a ‘Hide’ button?

Is there a way to abort the FormClosing event?

Answer 1

You could just capture the FormClosing event and stop the default action, then instead of closing the form just hide it:

private void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
{
    e.Cancel = true;
    this.Hide();
}