With the TextBox control, the user can enter text in an application. This control has additional functionality that is not found in the standard Windows text box control, including multiline editing and password character masking.

Typically, a TextBox control is used to display, or accept as input, a single line of text. You can use the Multiline and ScrollBars properties to enable multiple lines of text to be displayed or entered. Set the AcceptsTab and AcceptsReturn properties to true to enable greater text manipulation in a multiline TextBox control.

Note:
You must set the Multiline property to true to adjust the height of the TextBox control. You can adjust the height by setting the Size property.

You can limit the amount of text entered into a TextBox control by setting the MaxLength property to a specific number of characters. TextBox controls can also be used to accept passwords and other sensitive information. You can use the PasswordChar property to mask characters entered in a single-line version of the control. Use the CharacterCasing property to enable the user to type only uppercase, only lowercase, or a combination of uppercase and lowercase characters into the TextBox control.

To scroll the contents of the TextBox until the cursor (caret) is within the visible region of the control, you can use the ScrollToCaret method. To select a range of text in the text box, you can use the Select method.

To restrict text from being entered in a TextBox control, you can create an event handler for the KeyDown event in order to validate each character entered in the control. You can also restrict all entry of data in a TextBox control by setting the ReadOnly property to true.

Note:
Most of the functionality of the TextBox control is inherited from the TextBoxBase class. Using the TextBox control with visual styles enabled will cause the incorrect handling of surrogate fonts.

Windows Mobile for Pocket PC, Windows Mobile for Smartphone, Windows CE Platform Note: In Pocket PC applications, tabs in a single-line text box display as brackets, but display in the usual way when Multiline is set to true.

The following code example creates a multiline TextBox control with vertical scroll bars. This example uses the AcceptsTab, AcceptsReturn, and Dock properties to make the multiline text box control useful for creating text documents.

Imports System
Imports System.Collections.Generic
Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Linq
Imports System.Text
Imports System.Windows.Forms

Public Class Form1
    Inherits Form

    Dim textBox1 As TextBox

    Public Sub New()
        InitializeComponent()
    End Sub

    Private Sub InitializeComponent()

        Me.textBox1 = New System.Windows.Forms.TextBox()
        Me.SuspendLayout()
        ' 
        ' textBox1
        ' 
        Me.textBox1.AcceptsReturn = True
        Me.textBox1.AcceptsTab = True
        Me.textBox1.Dock = System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle.Fill
        Me.textBox1.Multiline = True
        Me.textBox1.ScrollBars = System.Windows.Forms.ScrollBars.Vertical
        ' 
        ' Form1
        ' 
        Me.ClientSize = New System.Drawing.Size(284, 264)
        Me.Controls.Add(Me.textBox1)
        Me.Text = "TextBox Example"
        Me.ResumeLayout(False)
        Me.PerformLayout()

    End Sub

End Class

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