Question

how to find a command field control in the gridview.

in a method not in the row data bound.

so far i have used this coding but i cant find the control.

<asp:CommandField ButtonType="Image" ShowEditButton="True
                  HeaderText="Enter Leave"
                  EditImageUrl="~/IMAGES/edit-icon.gif">
    <ItemStyle HorizontalAlign="Center" />
</asp:CommandField>

source code:

ImageButton edit = (ImageButton)EmployeeDetails.FindControl("Image");
edit.Enabled = false;

Answer 1

You can disable column itself with,

GridView1.AutoGenerateEditButton = false;

from code behind pages.

---

Or you can use ItemTemplate instead of CommandField,

<asp:TemplateField>
    <ItemTemplate>
        <asp:LinkButton runat="server" ID="id" CommandName="Edit" Text="Edit" />
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>

And at code behind you can iterate through rows of GridView and disable each LinkButton.

foreach(GridViewRow gvr in GridView1.Rows)
{
    LinkButton row = gvr.FindControl("id") as LinkButton;
    row.Enabled = false;
} 

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First Edit :

I tried my second solution and it works. However, make sure your GridView is filled before you use foreach. Otherwise, GridView.Rows.Count would probably be 0.

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Second Edit :

This works for CommandField too. Replace 0 with the location of CommandField in your GridView.

protected void GridView1_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{        
    if(e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
    {
         e.Row.Cells[0].Enabled = false;
    }
}