Background of cell in a DataGridView

Question

I've been playing around with datagridviews for a bit and a question has came up. -> Doesn't changing a cells background work out of the CellFormatting event. I've tried this:

private void dataGridView1_CellFormatting(object sender, dataGridViewCellFormattingEventArgs e)
{
    if (dataGridView1.Columns[e.ColumnIndex].Name.Equals(dnsList.First<String>()))
    {
        DataGridViewRow row = dataGridView1.Rows[e.RowIndex];
        DataGridViewCell cell = row.Cells[e.ColumnIndex];
        cell.Style.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(194, 235, 211);
    }
}

Which works perfectly, whereas this:

private void ApplyColoring()
{
    if (dataGridView1.DataSource != null)
    {
        foreach (DataGridViewRow dataGridRow in dataGridView1.Rows)
        {
            DataGridViewCell cell = dataGridRow.Cells[dnsList.First<String>()];
            cell.Style.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(194, 235, 211);
        }
    }
}

Debugging tells me everything is sound, null-reference-or-whatever-exception-wise... Any tips?

Answer 1

I suggest calling your method from grid's DataBindingComplete event. Call from BackgroundWorker is probably too early and DataGridView.Rows are not initialized yet.

private void dataGridView1_DataBindingComplete(object sender, DataGridViewBindingCompleteEventArgs e)
{
      ApplyColoring();
}

Answer 2

You should perform the coloring in the CellPainting event, rather than CellFormatting, which is intended for formatting the value of the cell