A cancelable event is raised by a component when it is about to perform an action that can be canceled, such as the Closing event of a Form.

Note
The Closing event is deprecated and has been replaced by FormClosing. It is offered as an example here only to illustrate the usage of CancelEventArgs.

CancelEventArgs provides the Cancel property to indicate whether the event should be canceled.

Note

The HostProtectionAttribute attribute applied to this type or member has the following Resources property value: SharedState. The HostProtectionAttribute does not affect desktop applications (which are typically started by double-clicking an icon, typing a command, or entering a URL in a browser). For more information, see the HostProtectionAttribute class or SQL Server Programming and Host Protection Attributes.

The following example uses CancelEventArgs and a CancelEventHandler to handle the Closing event of a Form. This code assumes that you have created a Form with a class-level Boolean variable named isDataSaved. It also assumes that you have added a statement to invoke the OtherInitialize method from the form's Load method or the constructor (after the call to InitializeComponent).

' Call this method from the Load method of your form.
Private Sub OtherInitialize()
    ' Exchange commented line and note the difference.
    Me.isDataSaved = True
    'Me.isDataSaved = False
End Sub 'OtherInitialize

Private Sub Form1_Closing(sender As Object, e As _
   System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs) Handles MyBase.Closing
    If Not isDataSaved Then
        e.Cancel = True
        MessageBox.Show("You must save first.")
    Else
        e.Cancel = False
        MessageBox.Show("Goodbye.")
    End If
End Sub 'Form1_Closing

Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1 or later, Windows XP SP3, Windows XP SP2 x64 Edition, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core Role not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core Role not supported), Windows Server 2003 SP2

.NET Framework

.NET Framework Client Profile

Reference