Creating a VB.NET form that users cannot move

by Irina Medvinskaya | Jan 04, 2007 8:51:00 PM

Tags: Microsoft development tools, Programming languages, .NET, Irina Medvinskaya, Microsoft Visual Basic.Net, borderless form, Visual Basic Tips Newsletter

Takeaway: In Visual Basic .NET, there are two simple options for making sure that a form you create cannot be moved by users. Irina Medvinskaya discusses both options in this tip.

There are situations that require developers to prohibit users for moving a particular form. This may be required whenever you feel that the users need to fill out some data before proceeding or moving the form to work with some other application form.

In VB.NET, there are two simple options for making sure that the form can't be moved. In this tip, I explore both options, which are creating a borderless form and creating a form with borders.

Borderless form

You can make a borderless form by setting its FormBorderStyle property to None. This method works because borderless forms can't be moved. However, this option is somewhat limiting since utilizing this method results in a form that doesn't have any borders. The form would look like Figure 1.

Form with borders

If you want to implement a form that has borders but cannot be moved by users, the alternative is to set the ControlBox, MinimizeBox, and MaximizeBox properties to False. Then, you would set the Text property to an empty string. The resulting form will have a raised border but will not be moveable. The form would look like Figure 2.

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