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I've reviewed dozens of options/solutions on this and I just can't get it to work.

Simply put, I have a VB.Net Winform that has a textbox where a user can manually type in text or they can use a USB connected barcode scanner (that simulates a keyboard) to capture a UPC.

What I'm trying to do is get the barcode input to get entered into the textbox regardless of which control has the current focus.

I have set the KeyPreview property of the form to True.

I then added some code to the frmMain_Keypress event as follows:

 If Me.txtSearch.Focused = False Then txtSearch.Focus() End If

Very simple...and it works, sort of...

If txtSearch already has the focus, the entire barcode/UPC gets entered into the text box.

However, if another control has the focus, every character of the barcode/UPC EXCEPT THE FIRST CHARACTER gets entered into the text box. It always strips off the first character.

I placed some debug statements in the above code to see if the initial character was being read at all and it is being read...just not sent to the text box.

I've seen so many other REALLY complicated solutions to barcode scanning and it seems like I'm really close with something really simple, but, obviously it won't work if it strips the leading character.

Hopefully I'm missing something very obvious.

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  • Maybe the reader can be configured to send the leading and last character. Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 2:16
  • Perhaps you could use Raw Input to detect whether the keys come from the keyboard or the barcode scanner. If you detect input on the barcode scanner, immediately set focus on txtSearch. Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 2:21
  • can you simply add the key to your textbox from that code and mark the event has handled? Commented Nov 9, 2013 at 2:30

1 Answer 1

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Change the code in your KeyPress event to:

 If Me.txtSearch.Focused = False Then txtSearch.Focus() txtSearch.Text = e.KeyChar.ToString txtSearch.SelectionStart = txtSearch.Text.Length e.Handled = True End If

That way you capture the first key that comes in.

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1 Comment

How about if I am using a user control? Where I cannot set the user control's property KeyPreview to True

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