Creating an MDI Child Form in C#

This article demonstrates how to create a child Form in a Windows Forms application using C#.

Introduction

An MDI (Multiple Document Interface) application is an application in which we can view and work with several documents at once like Microsoft Excel or Visual Studio 2010. MDI applications having a feature of MDI child forms and its very essential element of it.

Get to Work

With the help of below given example, you can learn how to create an MDI Form and a MDI Child Form and by using default MDI Form control you can generate the new MDI child form. Here are the step required to build an MDI child Form support.

Step to Create and Implement MDI Child Form

1. Create a MDI parent form with a MenuStrip which containing the values New and Windows and Close in the sub menu of New.
   
            
     
2. Now go to Properties Window, select the all menu items and set the the MdiList property to true.
   
 

3. Now add MDI child forms by going in Solution Explorer, right-click the project, select Add New Item from Add Menu.

        

             
    

4. A Dialog box appear, now select Windows Form give the name as Form2 and click on open button. A New Form Name as Form2 added.

       

             
    

5. Add a RichTextBox Control to the Form from Toolbox.

              
    

6. Now go on Property Window and Set Properties for the RichTextbox. Set Anchor property to Top, Left and the Dock property to Fill.

             
    

7. Click on New Menu Item and generate a Click Event Handler on it.
   
             
    

8. Now Double click on New Menu Item and Write down the following Code.
   
             
    

               protectedvoid MDIChildNew_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
                   {
                    Form2 newMDIChild = newForm2();
                   // Set the Parent Form of the Child window.
                   newMDIChild.MdiParent =this;
                   // Display the new form.
                   newMDIChild.Show();
                   }
    

9. Now Run the application, And from output window you can create a new MDI child form by clicking on New Menu Item.   
   
              
   
             

Summary

In this article, we discussed how to build Windows Forms application with an MDI Child form support using Visual Studio 2010 and C#.