Question

I have an TextBox named pass in Form1 that I need to get the value of in form2. I tried this:

public partial class Form1 : Form {
    public string GetPass() {
        return pass.Text; 
    }
}

public partial class form2 : Form {
    //... 
    MessageBox.Show(new Form1().GetPass());
}

The above code returns an empty string, why?

Answer 1

You are not showing your actual code as evidenced by the syntax errors etc. – the only logical explanation for your problem is that you are not passing the reference to Form1 correctly to Form2, but create a new form instead – that new form would have the empty textbox.

To further help you, please show how you pass the reference to your Form1 in your actual code.

Edit:

Is see your edit now and above is exactly the problem. You have to pass a Form1 instance to form2 instead of creating a new one, i.e.:

public partial class form2 : Form 
{
  private Form1 form1;

  public form2(Form1 otherForm)
  {
     form1 = otherForm;
  }

  public void Foo()
  {
     MessageBox.Show(form1.GetPass());
  }
}