KeyDown event

[balexei]

Dear CodeGurus,

I am trying to assign some actions to the KeyDown event on my form (to any key, say 'a'), so I try the following:

        private void Form1_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
        {
            if(e.KeyCode != Keys.ShiftKey && e.KeyCode != Keys.ControlKey)
                MessageBox.Show(String.Format("{0:D}", e.KeyCode), "Message");
        }

My understanding that this should pop-up the Message Window any time when I press any character key on the keyboard. However, this works only if I have no controls on the form, if there is anything on it I get nothing. Can anybody explain why this is happening? How can I get it to work???

[BigEd781]

Because if you have a control on your form the KeyDown event is not passed through to your form by default. So, you can catch the KeyDown event in a specific control or, if you want this to be global, set the "KeyPreview" property of your form to true. This will cause the keyboard events to be passed to the parent form.

[balexei]

Thank you!!! It works!

[BigEd781]

No problem.

BTW, KeyCode is an enum, so checking for something like e.KeyCode != Keys.Shift is insufficient because you can hold shift AND press a key. You need to use boolean operations to determine if Shift was ONE of the keys that was pressed. For example:

private void Form1_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e
{
    if( (e.KeyCode & Keys.Shift ) != Keys.Shift )
    {
        //...
    }
}