Question

On a post back i cannot seem to get the selected menu item from the menu control in the MasterPage. I tried the following in page_load but it does not work and errors out ‘Object reference not set to an instance of an object’.

Html in the MasterPage

<asp:Menu ID="NavigationMenu" runat="server" CssClass="menu" EnableViewState="false"
       IncludeStyleBlock="false" Orientation="Horizontal">
       <Items>
            <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/Default.aspx" Text="Home" />
           <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/About.aspx" Text="About" />
            <asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/Contact.aspx" Text="Contact" />
       </Items>
</asp:Menu>

Page_Load in the MasterPage

 If IsPostBack Then
   Select Case NavigationMenu.SelectedItem.Text
        Case "Home"
            'code
        Case "About"
            'code
        Case "Contact"
            'code
   End Select
End If

Answer 1

You can use the MenuItemClick event. If NavigateUrl property is null “”, then the click event fires, if you have either “#” or a url to another page then the click event does not work. Reference article

  Protected Sub NavigationMenu_MenuItemClick(sender As Object, e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.MenuEventArgs) Handles NavigationMenu.MenuItemClick
    Select Case e.Item.Text
        Case "Home"
            'code
        Case "About"
            'code
        Case "Contact"
            'code
    End Select
  End Sub

Event will fire…

<asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="" Text="Home" />

Event will not fire…

<asp:MenuItem NavigateUrl="~/About.aspx" Text="About" />

Note:
I ended up using an Unordered List instead with Javascript postback to server side events. The asp.net MenuControl was not flexible enough for my situation.