The MainMenu control represents the container for the menu structure of a form. A menu is composed of MenuItem objects that represent the individual menu commands in the menu structure. Each MenuItem can be a command for your application or a parent menu for other submenu items. To bind the MainMenu to the Form that will display it, assign the MainMenu to the Menu property of the Form.

For applications that will have support for multiple languages, you can use the RightToLeft property to display the text of the menu from right to left to support languages such as Arabic.

You can create different MainMenu objects to represent different menu structures for your form. If you want to reuse the menu structure contained in a specific MainMenu, you can use its CloneMenu method to create a copy. Once you have a copy of the menu structure, you can make the appropriate modifications for your new menu structure.

Note:
Cutting and pasting menu items from one form to another in the designer might not work as expected if the form you are pasting into has no menu items defined.

The following code example creates a MainMenu, assigns two MenuItem objects to the MainMenu and binds it to a form. This example requires that you have a Form created that is named Form1.

Public Sub CreateMyMainMenu()
    ' Create an empty MainMenu.
    Dim mainMenu1 As New MainMenu()

    Dim menuItem1 As New MenuItem()
    Dim menuItem2 As New MenuItem()

    menuItem1.Text = "File"
    menuItem2.Text = "Edit"
    ' Add two MenuItem objects to the MainMenu.
    mainMenu1.MenuItems.Add(menuItem1)
    mainMenu1.MenuItems.Add(menuItem2)

    ' Bind the MainMenu to Form1.
    Menu = mainMenu1
End Sub

public void CreateMyMainMenu()
{
   // Create an empty MainMenu.
   MainMenu mainMenu1 = new MainMenu();

   MenuItem menuItem1 = new MenuItem();
   MenuItem menuItem2 = new MenuItem();

   menuItem1.Text = "File";
   menuItem2.Text = "Edit";
   // Add two MenuItem objects to the MainMenu.
   mainMenu1.MenuItems.Add(menuItem1);
   mainMenu1.MenuItems.Add(menuItem2);

   // Bind the MainMenu to Form1.
   Menu = mainMenu1;   
}

void CreateMyMainMenu()
{
   // Create an empty MainMenu.
   MainMenu^ mainMenu1 = gcnew MainMenu;
   MenuItem^ menuItem1 = gcnew MenuItem;
   MenuItem^ menuItem2 = gcnew MenuItem;
   menuItem1->Text = "File";
   menuItem2->Text = "Edit";

   // Add two MenuItem objects to the MainMenu.
   mainMenu1->MenuItems->Add( menuItem1 );
   mainMenu1->MenuItems->Add( menuItem2 );

   // Bind the MainMenu to Form1.
   Menu = mainMenu1;
}

Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Starter Edition, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000 SP4, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 98, Windows CE, Windows Mobile for Smartphone, Windows Mobile for Pocket PC

.NET Framework

.NET Compact Framework

Reference

Other Resources