Showing a tooltip for a MenuItem

Question

I've got a menu that contains, among other things, some most-recently-used file paths. The paths to these files can be long, so the text sometimes gets clipped like "C:\Progra...\foo.txt"

I'd like to pop a tooltip with the full path when the user hovers over the item, but this doesn't seem possible with the Tooltip class in .NET 2.0.

Am I missing something obvious?

Answer 1

Maybe you forgot to associate the tooltip with the control using SetToolTip.

Answer 2

@Chris Karcher,

May be I misunderstood you problem, but why do you need to use Tooltip class? You can assign your text to ToolTipText property and it will be shown to user.

Answer 3

If you are creating your menu items using the System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem class you won't have a "ToolTipText" property.

You should use the System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem class which is new as of .Net Framework 2.0 and DOES include the "ToolTipText" property.

Answer 4

Tooltip is set manually by:

testToolStripMenuItem2.ToolTipText = "My tooltip text";

The MenuItem can for example be part of this menu constellation: a menu strip with a menu item and a sub menu item. (This plumbing code is generated automatically for you in the code behind designer file if you use visual studio)

MenuStrip menuStrip1;    
ToolStripMenuItem testToolStripMenuItem; // Menu item on menu bar
menuStrip1.Items.Add(testToolStripMenuItem);

ToolStripMenuItem testToolStripMenuItem2; // Sub menu item
testToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add(testToolStripMenuItem2)