C# Text Property

Text is a property with many meanings.

It is available on Windows Forms controls (Form, TextBox). You can get and set this property to change the string that stores the text for the control. Controls implement Text differently.

Example. In this program, we use a TextBox as well the default Form. For more information about these controls, please see the appropriate articles. We assign the Text property of the enclosing Form (this) and the TextBox instance (textBox1).

TextBoxForm

C# program that uses Text property

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
	public Form1()
	{
	    InitializeComponent();
	}

	private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
	{
	    // Form has a Text property.
	    this.Text = "Dot Net Perls";

	    // TextBox has a Text property.
	    textBox1.Text = "Thanks";
	}
    }
}

You can see the results of this program in the screenshot. The title bar text of the window has its text changed to "Dot Net Perls". And the TextBox contains the string "Thanks". Text is implemented in different ways.

Tip: The Text property can be assigned to a string variable reference, or a string literal.

StringsString Literal

Summary. Knowing how to use the Text property on a Form (as with this.Text) is confusing because we often don't think of the title bar as text. The Text property becomes even more confusing when other controls implement it a different way.

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