How do I programmatically select items in a list box?

There are a few ways you can select items in a list box, depending on how it was originally bound to data.

Regardless of how a list box has been data bound, it's easy to set the SelectedIndex property of a list box to specify the item number you want to select.

In C#:

MyListBox.SelectedIndex = 0;

In VB .NET:

MyListBox.SelectedIndex = 0

However, if you're data driving a list box, you often don't know the index number of the item you want to select. If you have bound a list box to a string array, you can programmatically select an item in the list box by setting its SelectedItem property:

In C#:

MyListBox.SelectedItem = "MyText";

In VB .NET:

MyListBox.SelectedItem = "MyText"

If the listbox is bound to a data table or data view, the previous code won't work. Instead, you can programmatically select an item by setting the list box's Text property:

In C#:

MyListBox.Text = "MyText";

In VB .NET:

MyListBox.Text = "MyText"