TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms

Toolbox and Designer

Topic

The toolbox tab TX Text Control 34.0 and the designers of Visual Studio are how you put the editor, the ribbon and the bars on a form. When the tab is missing or the designer doesn't offer what you expect, the cause is usually the package source, the kind of project or the version. Visual Studio Toolbox and Designer describes how the toolbox works when everything is in place.

The Toolbox Tab Is Missing in a .NET Project

In a project for .NET 8 or higher, the toolbox has no tab TX Text Control 34.0.

The tab comes from the NuGet package: once TXTextControl.TextControl.WinForms.SDK is installed in the project, its items appear in the tab when a form is open in the designer. Visual Studio shows only the toolbox items that the current project can use.

  1. Install TXTextControl.TextControl.WinForms.SDK from Text Control Offline Packages, as Installing and Updating Packages describes.
  2. Open a form in the designer, not the code of the form.
  3. Look for the tab TX Text Control 34.0 in the toolbox.

The Designer Doesn't Work With the Package From the Private Feed

You installed the package from the Text Control Private NuGet Feed on your development machine, but the toolbox and the designers don't work as described.

The packages of the private feed are meant for compiling, on build servers and in CI/CD pipelines. To create applications and work with the designers of Visual Studio, the complete setup of TX Text Control must be installed on the development machine.

  1. Install the setup of the full or trial version. See Installing the Product.
  2. Install the package from Text Control Offline Packages, which the setup adds.

The Toolbox Tab Is Missing in a .NET Framework Project

In a Windows Forms project for the .NET Framework, the toolbox has no tab of TX Text Control.

For .NET Framework projects, the setup creates the toolbox tab. It is available in projects created with the template Windows Forms App (.NET Framework).

  1. Install the setup on the development machine.
  2. Create the project with the template Windows Forms App (.NET Framework), as Create a .NET Framework Application shows.

The Controls Aren't Where They Used to Be

After an upgrade to a new major version, you can't find the controls in the toolbox tab you used before.

The toolbox tab is named after the major version: the items of version 34.0 are in the tab TX Text Control 34.0, those of 33.0 were in TX Text Control 33.0. The items themselves are the same.

  1. Look for the tab TX Text Control 34.0.
  2. If the project still references the previous version, update it as Upgrading from Previous Versions describes.

The Designer Has No Toolbox Support in an Older Version

In a .NET project with version 30.0, or with 32.0 before Service Pack 2, the toolbox, the smart tags or the designer don't work.

Version 30.0 supported .NET 5 and .NET 6 without designer and toolbox support; version 31.0 added it. After Microsoft changed the Windows Forms designer for .NET, Service Pack 2 of version 32.0 restored the full support, including the toolbox, the smart tags and the NuGet packages.

  1. Update to the current version, 34.0, which supports the designer in Visual Studio 2022 and Visual Studio 2026.

The blog article 32.0 Service Pack 2: Licensing, Unit Testing, and Azure DevOps describes the changes of the service pack.

The Smart Tag of the Ribbon Can't Be Found

You want to add the ribbon tabs with the smart tag of the ribbon, but you can't find it.

The smart tag appears only when the ribbon itself is selected, not one of its tabs.

  1. Select the ribbon by clicking the title of its blue File tab, and click the smart tag at its upper right corner, as The Smart Tags of the Ribbon and the Sidebar shows.
  2. Add sidebars with the smart tag of the TextControl, not of the ribbon, as The Smart Tag of the TextControl describes.

MailMerge Isn't Shown on the Form

You dragged MailMerge from the toolbox onto the form, but it doesn't appear on the form.

MailMerge is a component without a user interface, and the designer places it in the component tray below the form.

  1. Select it in the component tray, and connect it to the TextControl with its TextComponent property, as The Properties Window shows.

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