How to display the same control on two different tabs?

Question

I'm using VB.NET

I need same control (ListBox) to be displayed on 2 different tabs.

Is it mandatory to create 2 different ListBox instances?

Solution 1

If you don't need design-time support you can simply, at runtime, change the ListBox instance's Parent from one tab to the other (making sure to set the positioning appropriately, of course).

Essentially, it's:

listBox1.Parent = tabControl1.TabPages[1];

In the end though, you'll probably find it easier to just have two ListBox's with the same data source.

Solution 2

Yes, I think you'll need a ListBox control on each tab. If they have the same data you can use the same DataSource for both though.

Solution 3

Yes, add a new instance on each tab.

Solution 4

If you want full designer support, you'll need two boxes. If doing it in code is enough, you can create a single listbox on form load, and manually add a reference to it to each tab page.

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Comments

[Larry]

That's the way to do :) I had to cope with a similar situation where different usercontrol instances had to be displayed in tabs, plus a same single control instance which had to appear on every tab. I used the same .Parent property trick as you, using a Panel placeholder inside the control instead of the TabPage : it works fine.

[beppe9000]

I did not expect it to be this simple to move a tabpage between tabcontrols :)