Question

I have created a database and table using Visual Studio’s SQL Server Compact 3.5 with a dataset as my datasource. On my WinForm I have a DataGridView with 3 columns. However, I have been unable to figure out how to get the columns to take up the full width of the DataGridView which is shown in the image below.

I want to make the abbreviates column wider and then have the description column extend all the way over to the edge of the form. Any suggestions?

Update:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace QuickNote
{
public partial class hyperTextForm : Form
{
    private static hyperTextForm instance;

    public hyperTextForm()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
        this.MdiParent = Application.OpenForms.OfType<Form1>().First();            
    }

    public static hyperTextForm GetInstance()
    {
        if (instance == null || instance.IsDisposed)
        {
            instance = new hyperTextForm();
        }

        return instance;
    }

    private void abbreviationsBindingNavigatorSaveItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        this.Validate();
        this.abbreviationsBindingSource.EndEdit();
        this.tableAdapterManager.UpdateAll(this.keywordDBDataSet);
    }

    private void hyperTextForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        // TODO: This line of code loads data into the 'keywordDBDataSet.abbreviations' table. You can move, or remove it, as needed.
        this.abbreviationsTableAdapter.Fill(this.keywordDBDataSet.abbreviations);
        abbreviationsDataGridView.Columns[1].Width = 60;
        abbreviationsDataGridView.Columns[2].Width = abbreviationsDataGridView.Width - abbreviationsDataGridView.Columns[0].Width - abbreviationsDataGridView.Columns[1].Width - 72;
    }
}
}

Answer 1

You could set the width of the abbrev column to a fixed pixel width, then set the width of the description column to the width of the DataGridView, minus the sum of the widths of the other columns and some extra margin (if you want to prevent a horizontal scrollbar from appearing on the DataGridView):

dataGridView1.Columns[1].Width = 108;  // or whatever width works well for abbrev
dataGridView1.Columns[2].Width = 
    dataGridView1.Width 
    - dataGridView1.Columns[0].Width 
    - dataGridView1.Columns[1].Width 
    - 72;  // this is an extra "margin" number of pixels

If you wanted the description column to always take up the “remainder” of the width of the DataGridView, you could put something like the above code in a Resize event handler of the DataGridView.