Question

I have a .NET forms application using a tab control with several tabs. There are a few elements (a button and a few text boxes) that need to be displayed on every tab. Rather than create 5 seperate elements (including all the appropriate properties), is there a way to create “links” to one element?

For example, when an event occurs, I need a textbox to display the same information in each tab. As it stands, I need to create a new textbox for each tab, then explicitly write to each. It would be easiest to just write to one textbox, then consider the rest “links” which automatically update.

Answer 1

Those controls really ought to be somewhere else than on a TabPage. But you can get what you want by implementing the SelectedIndexChanged event and change the Parent of the control. This sample code keeps the text box on the selected tab:

    private void tabControl1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) {
        textBox1.Parent = tabControl1.SelectedTab;
    }