#1,198 – Selectively Enabling Child Elements in a Disabled Panel

When you set IsEnabled to false in a panel, all child elements in that panel are disabled. You cannot selectively enabled child elements in the panel.

You may, however, want to selectively enable child elements in a panel. (E.g. Disable entire panel, then set IsEnabled=True, IsReadOnly=True on TextBox controls so that you can copy text).

One possible solution is to define a new control that inherits from TextBox and does not coerce the value of IsEnabled.

    public class CanEnableTextBox : TextBox
    {
        static CanEnableTextBox()
        {
            CanEnableTextBox.IsEnabledProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof(CanEnableTextBox),
                new System.Windows.UIPropertyMetadata(true,
                    new PropertyChangedCallback(IsEnabledPropertyChanged),
                    new CoerceValueCallback(CoerceIsEnabled)));

        }

        private static void IsEnabledPropertyChanged(DependencyObject source, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args)
        {
            // Overriding PropertyChanged results in merged metadata, which is what we want--
            // the PropertyChanged logic in UIElement.IsEnabled will still get invoked.
        }

        private static object CoerceIsEnabled(DependencyObject source, object value)
        {
            return value;
        }
    }

You can now use this control in a panel that has IsEnabled set to false and you’ll be able to set IsEnabled on the child TextBox.