Question

I have a WinForms application with a DataGridView control and a column of DataGridViewButtonCell cells within that. When I click on one of these buttons, it starts a background task, and I’d like to disable the buttons until that task completes.

I can disable the DataGridView control, but it gives no visual indication that the buttons are disabled. I want the user to see that the buttons are disabled, and to notice that the task has finished when the buttons are enabled again.

Bonus points for a method that allows me to disable the buttons individually, so I can leave one of the buttons enabled while the task runs. (Note that I can’t actually give out bonus points.)

Answer 1

Here’s the best solution I’ve found so far. This MSDN article gives the source code for a cell class that adds an Enabled property.

It works reasonably well, but there are two gotchas:

1. You have to invalidate the grid after setting the Enabled property on any cells. It shows that in the sample code, but I missed it.
2. It’s only a visual change, setting the Enabled property doesn’t actually enable or disable the button. The user can still click on it. I could check the enabled property before executing the click event, but it also seemed to be messing up the appearance when the user clicked on it. Instead, I just disabled the entire grid. That works alright for me, but I’d prefer a method that allows me to disable some buttons without disabling the entire grid.

There’s a similar sample in the DataGridView FAQ.