Question

I’d like to deselect all selected rows in a DataGridView control when the user clicks on a blank (non-row) part of the control.
How can I do this?

Answer 1

To deselect all rows and cells in a DataGridView, you can use the ClearSelection method:

myDataGridView.ClearSelection()

If you don’t want even the first row/cell to appear selected, you can set the CurrentCell property to Nothing/null, which will temporarily hide the focus rectangle until the control receives focus again:

myDataGridView.CurrentCell = Nothing

To determine when the user has clicked on a blank part of the DataGridView, you’re going to have to handle its MouseUp event. In that event, you can HitTest the click location and watch for this to indicate HitTestInfo.Nowhere. For example:

Private Sub myDataGridView_MouseUp(ByVal sender as Object, ByVal e as System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs)
    ''# See if the left mouse button was clicked
    If e.Button = MouseButtons.Left Then
        ''# Check the HitTest information for this click location
        If myDataGridView.HitTest(e.X, e.Y) = DataGridView.HitTestInfo.Nowhere Then
            myDataGridView.ClearSelection()
            myDataGridView.CurrentCell = Nothing
        End If
    End If
End Sub

Of course, you could also subclass the existing DataGridView control to combine all of this functionality into a single custom control. You’ll need to override its OnMouseUp method similar to the way shown above. I also like to provide a public DeselectAll method for convenience that both calls the ClearSelection method and sets the CurrentCell property to Nothing.

(Code samples are all arbitrarily in VB.NET because the question doesn’t specify a language—apologies if this is not your native dialect.)