Question

I have an app, where I generate text (about 500 characters), and I would like the user to have some means of copying that text for use outside of the application.

I don’t want to use any capabilities for this app (like web, or contacts).

Here’s what I’ve tried (and why it’s failed)

• TextBox. IsReadOnly = true; SelectAll();
  • Can’t SelectAll a read only text box
• Turn off read only, hide the SIP
  • Can’t hide the SIP on a (non-read-only) TextBox that the user is interacting with (I want to enable the user to copy, so needs to interact with the control)
• allow edits, show sip, SelectAll()
  • The “copy” icon doesn’t appear unless the user chose to select text
• On selection changed (actually changed), SelectAll()
  • The “copy” icon doesn’t appear unless the user selected the text? The copy icon appears erratically, nothing I would call an acceptable user experience.

So at this point, I’m quite far from what I want in a user experience, and I still don’t have anything that works. Any suggestions?

Some other possible ways to answer my question include:

• “How do I force the copy button to appear above text I programatically selected?”
• “How do I change the selection behavior of a tap in a text box?”

Answer 1

Here’s what I eventually got mostly working

    private void Export(StackPanel stacker)
    {
        var exportHeader = new TextBlock();
        exportHeader.Text = "Export";
        stacker.Children.Add(exportHeader);
        var exportBox = new TextBox();
        stacker.Children.Add(exportBox);
        //exportBox.IsReadOnly = true; // hides SIP, but causes an exception with SelectAll() (pre-Mango, I haven't tried on Mango yet)
        exportBox.FontSize = 1;
        exportBox.Text = textToExport;
        exportBox.GotFocus += new System.Windows.RoutedEventHandler((send, ev) =>
        {
            ((TextBox)send).SelectAll();
        });
        exportBox.Focus();
    }

Apparently, making the font size 1 makes the difference here, maybe because all of the text can appear on the screen at once? Who knows.

I accepted this answer, because no one else posted a better solution. I would appreciate a better solution. If you can get the SIP to go away, that would be awesome.