Question

I have 2 forms. In form1 i have a textbox called TextBox1
In Form2 i have another textbox called TextBox2.

I want the text from textbox1 to textbox2, i tried this.

TextBox2.Text = Form1.TextBox1.Text

Do i need to make changes to the first textbox?

Answer 1

As Joel mentioned you will need to make the TextBox control public, be default they are Friend which allows other classes/controls/forms in the same Assembly (VB.NET Project) to access the control but not classes/controls/forms from outside the Assembly.

The change can be made in two ways, in the GUI Designer or the generated code.

To make the change in the designer:

• Select the TextBox
• Go to the Properties window (or right-click and select “Properties”)
• Change the “Modifiers” property to “Public”

To change the generated code you will need to:

• enable “Show All Files” in the Solution Explorer
• Right-click the Form’s .Designer.vb file and select “View Code”

• Locate the TextBox’s declaration, which will be like:

  Friend WithEvents TextBox1 As Windows.Forms.TextBox

Change “Friend” to “Public”

Public WithEvents TextBox1 As Windows.Forms.TextBox

On a side-note This works fine, but is generally not a good practice to have controls “reaching into” other controls to get/set values. I understand you’re new to .net so I’ll spare the details, but once you feel you’ve tackled the initial learning curve you’ll want to read into the ideas behind the MVC / MVP / MVVM / MV* patterns–they focus on seperation of logic and UI