Question

I am using the gridview control for displaying records.
I would like the first 6 records to be displayed from the datasource.
The remaining rows (only for COL2 and COL4) should be replaced with the question mark character

Something like this one.

COL1  COL2  COL3  COL4  COL5 

row1  row1  row1  row1  row1
row2  row2  row2  row2  row2
...
...
row6  row6  row6  row6  row6
row7   ?    row7   ?    row7
row8   ?    row8   ?    row8
row9   ?    row9   ?    row9

Answer 1

You can use the RowIndex of the GridViewRow in RowDataBound to change the cell-text to ?:

protected void gridView1_RowDataBound(Object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
    {
        if(e.Row.RowIndex > 5)
        {
            e.Row.Cells[1].Text = "?";
            e.Row.Cells[3].Text = "?";
        }
    }
}