Question

I have a tab control in a form and user controls are loaded onto each tab page at the form load event. I want to switch between tabs using command buttons within the tab pages, meaning the buttons are in different user controls and not on the form.

tabControl1.SelectedTab = tabPage2;

could not be used because of that. How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

tabControl1.SelectedIndex = index; 
//where index is the index (integer value) of the tabpage you want to select

UPDATE

Check:
How to access properties of a usercontrol in C#

Expose the properties as properties of your user control like this:

public int TabControlIndex
{
get { return tabControl1.index; }
set { tabControl1.index = value; }
 }

you can call the same on your form load event like this:

Usercontrol1.TabControlIndex = index;
//where index is the index (integer value) of the tabpage you want to select