WPF ShowDialog doesn't display dialog.

Question

I have a WPF application which mostly works just fine. However a couple of people have reported that when they press the browse button nothing happens. The code for this seems pretty simple:

    private void btnBrowseFile_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog dlg = new Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog();
        dlg.Filter = "Supported Types (*.xml)|*.xml"; 
        Nullable<bool> result = dlg.ShowDialog();
        if (result == true)
        {   

Environment is Windows 7, .Net 3.5 SP1, single monitor. Apparently no exception occurs and the application isn't hung. The OpenFileDialog simply fails to appear.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Barrie

Answer 1

Not really a solution but an idea:

Try to use the ShowDialog(Window)-signature. I have never had a problem as you described and I always use the mentioned signature. Maybe there is a problem automatically detecting the owner.

Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog dlg = new Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog(); 
        dlg.Filter = "Supported Types (*.xml)|*.xml";  
        Nullable<bool> result = dlg.ShowDialog(Window.GetWindow(this)); 
        if (result == true) 
        {  

Another option would be to use the Win-Forms dialog. However this has the disadvantage of loading the corresponding assembly. But if you don't open the dialog at app startup, I think this should not be a big problem.

I would also look what can prevent firing the event handler. IMO it's more likely that the event handler never will be called than that a problem with the OpenFileDialog exists.