TableLayoutPanel In C#

TableLayoutPanel control represents a panel that dynamically lays out its contents in a table format. You want to use a TableLayoutPanel in complex and sophisticated applications where you need to create dynamic layouts.

In this article, I will demonstrate how to create and use a TableLayoutPanel control in a Windows Forms application.

Creating a TableLayoutPanel

We can create a TableLayoutPanel control using the Forms designer at design-time or using the TableLayoutPanel class in code at run-time.

Design-time

To create a TableLayoutPanel control at design-time, you simply drag and drop a TableLayoutPanel control from Toolbox onto a Form in Visual Studio. After you drag and drop a TableLayoutPanel on a Form, the TableLayoutPanel looks like Figure 1. Once a TableLayoutPanel is on the Form, you can move it around and resize it using the mouse and set its properties and events.

Figure 1

If you click on little handle of TableLayoutPanel, you will see options to add, remove, and edit rows and columns of the panel. Once rows and columns are added to a TableLayoutPanel, we can drag and drop child controls to these cells to manage the layouts.

Run-time

Creating a TableLayoutPanel control at run-time is merely a work of creating an instance of TableLayoutPanel class, setting its properties and adding TableLayoutPanel class to the Form controls.

The first step to create a dynamic TableLayoutPanel is to create an instance of TableLayoutPanel class. The following code snippet creates a TableLayoutPanel control object.

In the next step, you may set properties of a TableLayoutPanel control. The following code snippet sets location, size and name properties of a TableLayoutPanel.

Once the TableLayoutPanel control is ready with its properties, the next step is to add the TableLayoutPanel to a Form. To do so, we use Form.Controls.Add method that adds TableLayoutPanel control to the Form controls and displays on the Form based on the location and size of the control. The following code snippet adds a TableLayoutPanel control to the current Form.

Adding Controls to a TableLayoutPanel

You can add controls to a TableLayoutPanel by dragging and dropping control to the TableLayoutPanel. We can add controls to a TableLayoutPanel at run-time by using its Add method.

ColumnStyle and RowStyle properties are used to specify number of columns and rows in a TableLayoutPanel. Add method is used to add a row and column to RowStyle and ColumnStyle respectively.