How to make scrollbars appear in a resizable panel when the contained control is too big for it ?

Question

I am developing a Windows Forms application (.NET 2.0, VS 2005). I have a form that essentially contains a panel that is dynamically resized with the form :

this.panel1.Dock=DockStyle.Fill;

This panel is simply used as a container. At runtime, a custom control will be added :

UserControl uc=new UserControl();
panel1.Controls.Add(uc);
uc.Dock=DockStyle.Fill;

As this custom control has a minimum size requirement, I want scroll bars to appear on the containing panel if it gets too small to show the entire control :

this.panel1.AutoScroll=true;

This does not work. I have tried to resize the panel using the Anchor property rather than the Dock property, to no avail.

Answer 1

Use setBounds() method.

uc.SetBounds(1, 1, 400, 400);

Answer 2

Don't Dock your User control. Use the Anchor property instead. (Anchor to all four sides). Set you User control's MinimumSize property Set the panel's AutoScrollMinSize property

The Panel's scrollbars won't appear unless you set its AutoScrollMinSize property. Setting the user control's Dock to Fill seems to hide the panel's scrollbars.

Answer 3

After InitializeComponent in the dialog form, I did this and it seemed to work:

tableLayoutPanel1.AutoScrollMinSize = tableLayoutPanel1.GetPreferredSize(new Size(1, 1));

I have a bunch of subpanels in the table. All the rows and columns are set to AutoSize. For some reason, the control is not smart enough tell the scroll control it's preferred size.