How to find a control on a Windows form

Question

I am writing a Windows Form application with Visual Studio C# under .Net framework.

I have a number of Labels on the form, say, Label1, Label2, Label3, etc.

I need to programmatically read and change some properties of a Label, based on the Label's name. That is, as a result of a calculation, I might need to change, say, Label2's color.

{
a = b+c ;
name_of_label_to_be_changed = "Label" + a.ToString();
[[[something_or_somecode_that_uses_name_label_to_be_changed]]].Forecolor = System.Drawing.Color.Red
}

How can I do that? How can I access a Label based on its name?

In Delphi, where I came from, there is a FindComponent function that does this.
I see that VisualC# has a FindControl method but that seems to be for web pages and doesn't even seem to be available in my setup.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Answer 1

Hello, you can try this:

a = b + c ;
name_of_label_to_be_changed = "Label" + a.ToString();
this.Controls[name_of_label_to_be_changed].Forecolor = System.Drawing.Color.Red;

I hope it helps.

Answer 2

Hi JeffreySchwartz-9279,
Regarding DarrenPeterson's code, I would like to point out that you need to change “()” to "[]".

this.Controls[name_of_label_to_be_changed].ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Red;  

And you can also use ControlCollection.Find() method as DavidLowndes-6766 said.

 this.Controls.Find(name_of_label_to_be_changed, true).FirstOrDefault().ForeColor = Color.Red;  

Best Regards,
Daniel Zhang

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Answer 3

Try the following in a separate project to get instant gratification; put some controls in the form including a TextBox. The Controls collection is all the controls whose parent is the form; this will not show controls whose parent is not the form. Note that c.GetType().Name is the type, such as Button, Label or TextBox.

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(string.Empty);
foreach (Control c in Controls)
{
    if (c.GetType().Name == "Label")
        sb.Append(c.Name + " " + c.GetType().Name + "!!!\r\n");
    else
        sb.Append(c.Name + " " + c.GetType().Name + "\r\n");
}
textBox1.Text = sb.ToString();