Stop the 'Ding' when pressing Enter

Question

I have a very simple Windows Forms Application. And, in Windows (or, atleast Windows Forms Applications), when you press Enter while inside a Single-line TextBox Control, you hear a Ding. It's an unpleasent sound, that indicated you cannot enter a newline, because it is a single-line TextBox.

This is all fine. However, in my Form, I have 1 TextBox, and a Search Button. And I am allowing the user to Perform a search by pressing Enter after they've finished typing, so they don't have to use the mouse to click the Search Button.

But this Ding sound occurs. It's very annoying.

How can we make it so just that sound doesn't play at all in my Form?

@David H - Here's how I'm detecting the enter pressing:

private void textBox1_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter)
    {
        // Perform search now.
    }
}

Simplex

How do you detect that Enter has been pressed when the focus is in the text box? – Mneme

In the Properties Pane, you double-click the KeyDown or KeyUp Event. Then, in Code View, you type the code that I'm about to put in my question for yah. – Simplex

KeyPress is probably the right event, and you want to set e.Handled = true – Mneme

I wish there was some way to suppress the annoying ding but allow the key press to bubble up. Sometimes a key press is just a key press, no need for alarm. – Kathline

Answer 1

Check out the Form.AcceptButton property. You can use it to specify a default button for a form, in this case for pressing enter.

From the docs:

This property enables you to designate a default action to occur when the user presses the ENTER key in your application. The button assigned to this property must be an IButtonControl that is on the current form or located within a container on the current form.

There is also a CancelButton property for when the user presses escape.

Depositor

Thank you @mdm, this worked the best for me. :) I will come back to upvote when I have more rep. – Simplex

@Simplex i have the same problem .. but im using UserControl .. it doesn't have Form.AcceptButton .. how to fix it? – Sparks

Visual Studio doesn't seem to have a field in the Properties pane for this. It has to be done in code, apparently. this.AcceptButton = buttonOK; this.CancelButton = buttonCancel; – Claro

This won't work for ToolStripButtons or if you want to use the ENTER key to validate a TextBox or ToolStripTextBox. The better approach would be the answer of Lucio Fonseca which worked for me with ToolStripTextBox. – Commentate

I can not see your solution you do not have a practical exercise to be more enlightened – Troika

Answer 2

It works for me:

private void textBox1_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{

    //Se apertou o enter
    if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter)
    {
        //enter key is down

        this.doSomething();

        e.Handled = true;
        e.SuppressKeyPress = true;

     }

 }

The SuppressKeyPress is the really trick. I hope that help you.

Triaxial

This is the only valid answer, in my opinion. e.Handled = true; was insufficient; it was the SuppressKeyPress that did the trick. – Ongoing

textBox1_KeyUp will ding in this situation regardless of Handled or SuppressKeyPress – Mundy

It doesn't happened with me. But is possible that you should do it to stop ding. In my case, I used the last visualStudio release. []s. – Triaxial

Works for me with ToolStripTextBox.KeyDown. No other solution did. Thanks! – Commentate

It didn't work for me on my textbox and KeyDown event – Findley

This should be the accepted answer. The current accepted answer requires a standard button placed on the form which is unpleasant. – Heal

This was enough for me. I didn't have access to suppress property because my event uses KeyPressEventArgs, not KeyEventArgs. – Tips

THIS DOES NOT WORK on vb net textbox. If it's multiline it does not beep, if it is not multiline it beeps and there is no way to prevent this apparenty – Horseflesh

This was exactly what I needed. In my CRM login form, I capture and handle my hotkeys in the Form-level KeyUp event (with KeyPreview = true). That keeps all my key handling code in one place, but there's no obvious way in KeyUp event handler to suppress the key event from getting re-processed by the textboxes. I use <kbd>ENTER</kbd> to submit the dialog, and the textbox re-processing was triggering the annoying ding. And my my case, the login button is in a toolbar, so I can't set it as the Form.AcceptButton, – Kwiatkowski

This worked for me in a .NET 4.6.2 C# winforms TextBox KeyDown event. No more audible noise. – Heap

This code will not stop the ding if there is an Application.DoEvents() line anywhere in the body of the function or any functions called from there. – Jaquesdalcroze

I got it to work with my KeyUp event by leaving the 'doSomething()' in KeyUp, but adding a Keydown event that has the rest of the rest of Lucio's 'ding suppression' code – Irreverence

Answer 3

Try

textBox.KeyPress += new KeyPressEventHandler(keypressed);

private void keypressed(Object o, KeyPressEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter)
    {
        e.Handled = true; //this line will do the trick
    }
}

Tiphanie

Correct, but it will only work if the focus is still on the TextBox. What about if the user presses Tab first? – Depositor

@Depositor Depends on the UI design. Perhaps OP only wants this action when focus is on the text box. That's pretty common. – Mneme

If the user pressed Tab, the focus will no longer be on the TextBox, the next Contorl that will be Focused is the Button Control, which doesn't make that sound when you press Enter on it. :-) – Simplex

@David, thanks for your example. I just tried it. And Whenever I put the e.Handled = true in the .KeyPress event, none of the other code executes. The only thing that happens is all the Text in the TextBox becomes selected (and I don't even have code that selects any text) – Simplex

Lucio Fonseca's answer was the only one that I found to take care of the problem. – Ongoing

This also didn't work for me on my textbox and KeyDown event – Findley

Answer 4

Just add e.SuppressKeyPress = true; in your "if" statement.

private void textBox1_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter)
    {
        //If true, do not pass the key event to the underlying control.
        e.SuppressKeyPress = true;  //This will suppress the "ding" sound.*/

        // Perform search now.
    }
}

Vlissingen

Answer 5

You can Use KeyPress instead of KeyUp or KeyDown its more efficient and here's how to handle

  private void textBox1_KeyPress(object sender, KeyPressEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.KeyChar == (char)Keys.Enter)
        {
            e.Handled = true;
            button1.PerformClick();
        }
    }

and say peace to the 'Ding'

Jinx

This worked perfectly for me. e.Handled apparently disables the 'Ding'. Making the 'Submit' button (in my case) the default, would not have worked for me because I wanted to handle the 'Enter' key differently for other text boxes on the form.<br/><br/> By the way: For this project I am using VB. so instead of casting e.KeyChar, I convert it: if e.KeyChar = ChrW(Keys.Enter Then .... – Atom

Within the KeyDown, using e.Handled and e.SuppressKeyPress didn't work for me - still dinging. But changing it as suggested here to use the KeyPress' event and e.Handled` did it nicely. – Acutance

Answer 6

Use SuppressKeyPress to stop continued processing of the keystroke after handling it.

public class EntryForm: Form
{
   public EntryForm()
   {
   }

   private void EntryTextBox_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
   {
      if(e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter)
      {
         e.Handled = true;
         e.SuppressKeyPress = true;
         // do some stuff

      }
      else if(e.KeyCode == Keys.Escape)
      {
          e.Handled = true;
          e.SuppressKeyPress = true;
          // do some stuff

      }
   }

   private void EntryTextBox_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
   {
      if(e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter)
      {
         // do some stuff

      }
      else if(e.KeyCode == Keys.Escape)
      {
         // do some stuff

      }
   }
}

Cheka

Answer 7

On WinForms the Enter key causes a Ding sound because the form property AcceptButton is not specified. If you don't need an AcceptButton the ding sound can be suppressed by setting the form KeyPreview to true and enter the following KeyPress event:

private void Form_KeyPress(object sender, KeyPressEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.KeyChar == '\r')
        e.Handled = true;
}

No matter what control is active, there will be no more ding sound when pressing the Enter key. Since the key event proccessing order is KeyDown, KeyPress and KeyUp the Enter key will still work for the KeyDown events for the controls.

Grapery

Answer 8

I stumbled on this post while trying to handle a KeyDown this worked for me.

If e.KeyCode = Keys.Enter Then
   e.SuppressKeyPress = True
   btnLogIn.PerformClick()
End If

Supressing the Key Press stops the event from being sent to the underlying control. This should work if you're manually handling everything that the enter key will be doing within that textbox. Sorry about the Visual Basic.

Gelsenkirchen

Answer 9

$("#txtSomething").keypress(function (e) {
        if (e.which == 13) {

            e.Handled = true; //This will prevent the "ding" sound

            //Write the rest of your code
        }
    });

Jennijennica

Answer 10

There is a very little chance anyone gets to this answer but some other answers are truly scary. Suppressing event on KeyDown kills 2 additional events in one strike. Setting e.Handled property to true is useless in this context.
The best way is to set Form.AcceptButton property to the actual Search Button.
There is also another way of utilizing Enter key - some people may want it to act as TAB button. To do that, add a new Button, set its Location property outside of the Form area (i.e. (-100, -100)) - setting Visible property to false may disable Button handlers in some cases. Set Form.AcceptButton property to your new button. In Click event handler add following code
this.SelectNextControl(ActiveControl, true, true, true, true)

Now, you may want to transfer focus only when focus it on TextBox you may want to either test ActiveControl type or use e.Supress property in event handlers of controls not meant to use Enter as TAB That's it. You don't even need to capture e.KeyCode

Tortious

Answer 11

Set your Search button's IsDefault property to true. This will make it a default button and it will be auto-clicked when Enter is pressed.

Jeanene

From the docs you linked to To specify the default button of a form, set the AcceptButton property of the form to the desired button. – Depositor

Yes, I've investigated this myself. It seems both approaches are interchangeable. AcceptButton seems more stylish, but I'm used to IsDefault myself. – Jeanene

Answer 12

Well I lived with this problem long enough and looked it up here.

After thinking about this for quite some time and wanting the simplest way to fix it I came up with the easiest but not so elegant way to fix it.

Here is what I did.

1. Put 2 invisible buttons "Ok" and "Cancel" on the form.
2. Set the AcceptButton and CancelButton Property on the form to the invisible buttons.
3. Added no code to the buttons!

This solved all the secondary problems listed in this thread including the ToolStripMenu. My biggest complaint was the BindingNavigator, when I would enter a record number into the Current position to navigate to and pressed enter.

As per the original question in which the programmer wanted a search function when the enter button was pressed I simply put the search code in the invisible OK Button!

So far this seems to solve all problems but as we all know with Visual Studio, something will probably crop up.

The only other possible elegant way I could think of would be to write a new keystroke handling class which is way to much work for most of my projects.

Discompose

Answer 13

You can set your textbox multi-line to true then handle the Enter key press.

private void yourForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        textBox1.Multiline = true;
    }

//then write your TextBox codes
private void textBox1_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Enter)
    {
        // doSomething();
    }
}

Microcline

Answer 14

i changed the textbox properties for an multiline textbox and it works for me.

Electrician

Answer was already stated below on 22-feb. You have to take care of [enter] too ;) – Anaphrodisiac

Answer 15

Concerning the e.SuppressKeyPress = true; solution, it works fine by itself. Setting SuppressKeyPress to true also sets Handled to true, so there's no need to use e.Handled= true;

Daisy

Answer 16

I hope this would help:

Using KeyDown instead of KeyPress

private void AdvancedSearch_TXT_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
        {
            if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Escape)
            {
                AdvancedSearch_TXT.Clear();
                e.SuppressKeyPress = true;
            }
        }

e.SupressKeyPress will do the trick

Insipid

any affiliation with the channel in the video you linked to? (/help/promotion) – Paper

@user No. Just saw it suitable for people to see the idea vividly – Insipid

Answer 17

The e.SuppressKeyPress = True solution in the KeyDown event handler did not work for me since I have an Application.DoEvents() action called somewhere in the handler. (I know there is some hesitation using DoEvents(), but I could not find another solution)

I could eliminate the ding sound by just setting the TextBox.MultiLine property TextBox1.Multiline which allows the Enter key. Since the Enter key executes the handler, the user cannot enter multi-lines in this case anyway.

Takashi

Answer 18

void RTextBox_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.KeyData == Keys.Enter)
    {
        //do ...
        bool temp = Multiline;
        Multiline = true;
        e.Handled = true;
        Multiline = temp;
    }
}

Gottuard

This is a redundant answer with only code, no explanation. Also, all of the Multiline code is completely irrelevant. – Ongoing