How to intercept capture TAB key in WinForms application?

Question

Hi, could you please help me with this one? I'm trying to capture Tab key in Windows Forms application and do a custom action on it.

I have a Form with several listViews and buttons, I've set Form's KeyPreview property to true and when I press any other key than tab, my KeyDown event handler does get called. But that's not true with the Tab key - I don't receive WM_KEYDOWN message even in WndProc. Do I need to set each control inside my form - its TabStop property - to false? There must be a more ellegant way that that. Thanks.

Answer 1

will this help you?

Answer 2

This is the C# code similar to the VB code given above link...

protected override bool ProcessCmdKey(ref Message msg, Keys keyData)
    {
        if (keyData == Keys.Tab)
        {
            //your code
        }
        return base.ProcessCmdKey(ref msg, keyData);
    }

Hope this helps...

Answer 3

Do not know about C#, but for C++: TAB key processed in PretranslateMeggase of CDialog class. More precisely in CDialog::PretranslateMessage the IsDialogMessage is called. So in MSVC++ to proceess TAB you should override PretranslateMessage. I believe in C# should be something similar.

Also you can look at keyboard hooks.