C# – multiline textbox auto adjust it’s height according to the amount of text

cwinforms

I have a textbox which can return various strings ranging from 5 characters upto 1000 characters in length.
It has the following properties:

multiline = true
wordwrap = true

Which other properties of the textbox do I need to set to make the following possible?

The width of the box should be fixed
The height of the box to auto adjust depending on how much text it is returning e.g if the text runs onto 3 lines then it adjusts to 3 lines in height.

Best Answer

Try this following code:

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
     private const int EM_GETLINECOUNT = 0xba;
     [DllImport("user32", EntryPoint = "SendMessageA", CharSet = CharSet.Ansi, SetLastError = true, ExactSpelling = true)]
     private static extern int SendMessage(int hwnd, int wMsg, int wParam, int lParam);


     public Form1()
     {
        InitializeComponent();
     }

     private void textBox1_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
     {
        var numberOfLines = SendMessage(textBox1.Handle.ToInt32(), EM_GETLINECOUNT, 0, 0);
        this.textBox1.Height = (textBox1.Font.Height + 2) * numberOfLines;
     }
}

Related Solutions

Winforms – How to show scrollbars on a System.Windows.Forms.TextBox only when the text doesn’t fit

I came across this question when I wanted to solve the same problem.

The easiest way to do it is to change to System.Windows.Forms.RichTextBox. The ScrollBars property in this case can be left to the default value of RichTextBoxScrollBars.Both, which indicates "Display both a horizontal and a vertical scroll bar when needed." It would be nice if this functionality were provided on TextBox.

C# – How to automatically scroll to the bottom of a multiline text box

At regular intervals, I am adding new lines of text to it. I would like the textbox to automatically scroll to the bottom-most entry (the newest one) whenever a new line is added.

If you use TextBox.AppendText(string text), it will automatically scroll to the end of the newly appended text. It avoids the flickering scrollbar if you're calling it in a loop.

It also happens to be an order of magnitude faster than concatenating onto the .Text property. Though that might depend on how often you're calling it; I was testing with a tight loop.

This will not scroll if it is called before the textbox is shown, or if the textbox is otherwise not visible (e.g. in a different tab of a TabPanel). See TextBox.AppendText() not autoscrolling. This may or may not be important, depending on if you require autoscroll when the user can't see the textbox.

It seems that the alternative method from the other answers also don't work in this case. One way around it is to perform additional scrolling on the VisibleChanged event:

textBox.VisibleChanged += (sender, e) =>
{
    if (textBox.Visible)
    {
        textBox.SelectionStart = textBox.TextLength;
        textBox.ScrollToCaret();
    }
};

Internally, AppendText does something like this:

textBox.Select(textBox.TextLength + 1, 0);
textBox.SelectedText = textToAppend;

But there should be no reason to do it manually.

^{(If you decompile it yourself, you'll see that it uses some possibly more efficient internal methods, and has what seems to be a minor special case.)}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Winforms – How to show scrollbars on a System.Windows.Forms.TextBox only when the text doesn’t fit

C# – How to automatically scroll to the bottom of a multiline text box

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