PlaceholderTexr

[mcdonald386]

I am new to VB 2026. My laptop has Windows 11, I have reached PlaceholderTexr in the book I am following but it does not seem to work for me. I have a textbox (textbox1) and can see PlaceholderText in the properties. I typed "Please enter you name" into the property and that appeared in the textbox but when I ran the program the textbox was empty. I also tried the line textbox1.PlaceholderTexr = "Please enter you name" in the Form Load event but the box was still empty when I ran the code.

Am I missing something?

[OptionBase1]

By design, when a TextBox has focus (contains the blinking cursor), the placeholder text will disappear.

I would place some dummy control on your form, such as a button, that does nothing. But then, when you run your program, if you click the button, which will give the button focus instead of the TextBox, the placeholder text should re-appear.

[.paul.]

In VB.Net there are API functions available for Windows tricks like this...

Public Class Form1

    Private Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32.dll" Alias "SendMessageA" (ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, ByVal Msg As Integer, ByVal wParam As IntPtr, <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)> ByVal lParam As String) As IntPtr

    Private Const EM_SETCUEBANNER As Integer = &H1501
    Dim retainOnFocus As New IntPtr(1)

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
               
        SendMessage(TextBox1.Handle, EM_SETCUEBANNER, retainOnFocus, "First Name")
        SendMessage(TextBox2.Handle, EM_SETCUEBANNER, retainOnFocus, "Last Name")
    End Sub

End Class

[wes4dbt]

You can just set the forms "ActiveControl" property to Nothing in the the forms Shown event.

    Private Sub Form3_Shown(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Me.Shown
        Me.ActiveControl = Nothing

    End Sub