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Toolbox

The Toolbox displays icons for controls and other items that you can add to Visual Studio projects. To open the Toolbox, click Toolbox on the View menu. You can dock the Toolbox, and you can pin it open or set it to Auto Hide.

Every Toolbox icon can be dragged to a design view or pasted in a code editor in the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). Either action adds the fundamental code to create an instance of the Toolbox item in the active project file.

The Toolbox only displays items appropriate to the type of file you are working in. The collection of available controls also depends on the .NET Framework version your project targets. By default, Visual Studio 2010 projects target the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. This reduces the size of deployment packages by not requiring the entire .NET Framework for installation. If your project requires a control that is not supported by the Client Profile, you can set your project to target .NET Framework 4 by editing the project properties.

Note

Your computer might show different names or locations for some of the Visual Studio user interface elements in the following instructions. The Visual Studio edition that you have and the settings that you use determine these elements. For more information, see Working with Settings.

Help on Toolbox Tabs

The following documents provide more information about specific Toolbox tabs.

Topic Location
Data Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio - Toolbox Controls and Components
Components Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio - Toolbox Controls and Components
General Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio - Toolbox Controls and Components
HTML Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio - Toolbox Controls and Components
Windows Forms Tab, Toolbox Windows Forms Programming
Data Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio - Toolbox Controls and Components
Components Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio - Toolbox Controls and Components
General Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio - Toolbox Controls and Components
HTML Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio - Toolbox Controls and Components
Standard Tab, Toolbox Visual Web Developer
Standard Tab, Toolbox Visual Web Developer
DataSet Tab, Toolbox Data Access in Visual Studio
Dialog Editor Tab, Toolbox Visual Studio Resource Editors

See Also

Other Resources

Using the Toolbox