Windows Forms provides the ability to handle keyboard messages at the form level, before the messages reach a control. This article shows how to accomplish this task.

Handle a keyboard message

Handle theKeyPress orKeyDown event of the active form and set theKeyPreview property of the form totrue. This property causes the keyboard to be received by the form before they reach any controls on the form. The following code example handles theKeyPress event by detecting all of the number keys and consuming1,4, and7.

// Detect all numeric characters at the form level and consume 1,4, and 7.// Form.KeyPreview must be set to true for this event handler to be called.void Form1_KeyPress(object sender, KeyPressEventArgs e){    if (e.KeyChar >= 48 && e.KeyChar <= 57)    {        MessageBox.Show($"Form.KeyPress: '{e.KeyChar}' pressed.");        switch (e.KeyChar)        {            case (char)49:            case (char)52:            case (char)55:                MessageBox.Show($"Form.KeyPress: '{e.KeyChar}' consumed.");                e.Handled = true;                break;        }    }}

' Detect all numeric characters at the form level and consume 1,4, and 7.' Form.KeyPreview must be set to true for this event handler to be called.Private Sub Form1_KeyPress(sender As Object, e As KeyPressEventArgs)    If e.KeyChar >= Chr(48) And e.KeyChar <= Chr(57) Then        MessageBox.Show($"Form.KeyPress: '{e.KeyChar}' pressed.")        Select Case e.KeyChar            Case Chr(49), Chr(52), Chr(55)                MessageBox.Show($"Form.KeyPress: '{e.KeyChar}' consumed.")                e.Handled = True        End Select    End IfEnd Sub

See also

• Overview of using the keyboard
• Using keyboard events
• Keys
• ModifierKeys
• KeyDown
• KeyPress