How to automatically select all text on focus in WPF TextBox?

by

If I call SelectAll from a GotFocus event handler, it doesn’t work with the mouse – the selection disappears as soon as mouse is released.

EDIT: People are liking Donnelle’s answer, I’ll try to explain why I did not like it as much as the accepted answer.

  • It is more complex, while the accepted answer does the same thing in a simpler way.
  • The usability of accepted answer is better. When you click in the middle of the text, text gets unselected when you release the mouse allowing you to start editing instantly, and if you still want to select all, just press the button again and this time it will not unselect on release. Following Donelle’s recipe, if I click in the middle of text, I have to click second time to be able to edit. If I click somewhere within the text versus outside of the text, this most probably means I want to start editing instead of overwriting everything.

33 Answers
33

We have it so the first click selects all, and another click goes to cursor (our application is designed for use on tablets with pens).

You might find it useful.

public class ClickSelectTextBox : TextBox
{
    public ClickSelectTextBox()
    {
        AddHandler(PreviewMouseLeftButtonDownEvent, 
          new MouseButtonEventHandler(SelectivelyIgnoreMouseButton), true);
        AddHandler(GotKeyboardFocusEvent, 
          new RoutedEventHandler(SelectAllText), true);
        AddHandler(MouseDoubleClickEvent, 
          new RoutedEventHandler(SelectAllText), true);
    }

    private static void SelectivelyIgnoreMouseButton(object sender, 
                                                     MouseButtonEventArgs e)
    {
        // Find the TextBox
        DependencyObject parent = e.OriginalSource as UIElement;
        while (parent != null && !(parent is TextBox))
            parent = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(parent);

        if (parent != null)
        {
            var textBox = (TextBox)parent;
            if (!textBox.IsKeyboardFocusWithin)
            {
                // If the text box is not yet focussed, give it the focus and
                // stop further processing of this click event.
                textBox.Focus();
                e.Handled = true;
            }
        }
    }

    private static void SelectAllText(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        var textBox = e.OriginalSource as TextBox;
        if (textBox != null)
            textBox.SelectAll();
    }
}

Leave a Comment