How Do I Avoid Merged Properties in the Property Grid?

Under normal circumstances, when you select multiple controls on a Web page, the property grid for the designer, like Visual Studio .NET or the Web Matrix, shows an intersection of the properties of the controls you selected. That is, it merges the properties that exist in all the controls and shows them in the grid as one property. This is often very useful as it allows you to quickly set the properties of a lot of controls to the same values, like the font for example.

However, this is probably not useful for all the properties of your control. Properties like the ID, the Name or any other property that needs to be unique throughout your control collection, should not participate in this "merge of properties ". Preventing your property from being merged is easy though; just apply the MergablePropertyAttribute:

  /// <summary>
  /// The UserName defines the Name of the user 
  /// and needs to be unique throughout the page.
  /// </summary>
  [
    Browsable(false),
    MergableProperty(false)
  ]
  public string UserName
  {
    get
    {
      return userName;
    }
  }
Now when you select multiple controls that have a UserName, that property will not show up in the property grid.

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On Monday, October 18, 2004 8:28:16 AM Yggy said:
Information is correct, and useful if you're wading through MSDN without finding what you want.

Here's a followup question -- what if I want the property grid to show a union of all the properties instead of an intersection? i.e. display all the properties of all SelectedObjects, with no merging?

many thanks,
yggy
On Tuesday, October 19, 2004 7:13:26 PM Imar Spaanjaars said:
I don't think this can be done automatically. VS.NET has built-in support for the merging of the properties, but AFAIK, there is no support for a union.

However, I do believe the Property Grid is a control that itself can be overridden, so maybe someone else has already extended the class with the desired behavior.....
On Tuesday, March 08, 2011 10:02:58 AM raghu said:
Hi
I've got here a simple PropertyGrid on my Form.
And there is an Array with n-Objects of simple Class with n
Attributes.

I used the Code of the following Article to localize all the
Properties, Descriptions, Categories... this works well if I use the
SelectedObject-Property of the PropertyGrid!
http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/GlobalizedPropertyGrid.asp?df=...

But if I try the SelectedObjects-Property, the PropertyGrid will not
show the Categories... it displays only the Misc-Category instead of
my own 3 Categories.

And the other Problem is, the PropertyGrid sort the Properties not by
the DisplayName. it use the Name to sort all the Properties.

Anybody know a Workaround for this two Problems?

On Tuesday, March 08, 2011 2:16:00 PM Imar Spaanjaars said:
Hi there,

Hard to say wiithout seeing your code. May I suggest you post this on a forum?

Cheers,

Imar

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Written byImar Spaanjaars
Date Posted06/29/2004 13:17
Date Last Reviewed 06/06/2006 22:32
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