Adding and removing ToolStripMenuItem's from MenuStrip and DropDownItems in WinForms

Question

I have MenuStrip with some static items. To this MenuStrip I am adding items programmatically. Some of these items has child items (DropDownItems).

At some point I would like to remove all added items to recreate menu with different items. How to do it right?

Example situation:

mainMenu
 -staticItem1
 -added1
  -added1_sub1
  -added1_sub2
 -added2
  -added2_sub1

I could do:

added1.Dispose();
mainMenu.Items.Remove(added2);

Both of this works, but I am not sure if it's safe. Maybe I should remove and dispose all items and subitems one by one recursively?

Answer 1

• Use Remove method only, it's enough
• You don't need recursive, When you remove a parent all its children will be removed
• Use Items.Clear() to remove all the children for the Menu and DropDownItems.Clear() to remove all the children for an item.