I have a masked text box and two text boxes. I would like to save all of these fields so that when the "open" button is clicked the field repopulate....

anybody have any idea on how to do this?
If so please help me out.

thanks in advance :)

Go to the project Properties, then click on "Settings" down the left side. Add as many string variables as you have text boxes to save. For example, if you add the string setting, MyText1 you can load the textbox on form load as

TextBox1.Text = My.Settings.MyText1

and save the value on form close for the next run as

My.Settings.MyText1 = TextBox1.Text

See if this.post helps for other options.

I personally prefer files to save/load to/from and in your case, I would save each ctl's.Text as a single line, load those lines into an Array and set values to each ctl.Text from there.

I have 24 textboxes textbox1 textbox2 textbox3 etc, and 11 maskedtextboxes maskedtextbox1 maskedtextbox2 maskedtextbox3 etc

could someone post a code snippet of what this would look like? (maybe one or two of each not all 35 textboxes...) and settings or anything i need to change? thanks much :)

See if this helps.

Imports System.IO
Public Class Form1
    Private myCoolFile As String = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop) & "\test.txt" '// your file.

    Private Sub Form1_FormClosing(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.FormClosingEventArgs) Handles Me.FormClosing
        File.WriteAllText(myCoolFile, saveCoolControls("TextBox", 3) & vbNewLine & saveCoolControls("MaskedTextBox", 3)) '// overwrite/create file.
    End Sub
    Private Function saveCoolControls(ByVal selCoolControlType As String, ByVal numberOfCoolControls As Integer) As String
        Dim sTemp As String = ""
        For i As Integer = 1 To numberOfCoolControls '// loop thru controls on Form.
            With CType(Me.Controls(selCoolControlType & i), Control) '// locate specified control.
                If Not sTemp = "" Then sTemp &= vbNewLine '// saves lines and adds line.breaks.
                sTemp &= .Name & ":" & .Text '// add .Name and .Text to save and load from, separated by ":".
            End With
        Next
        Return sTemp '// return the data for saving.
    End Function
    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        If IO.File.Exists(myCoolFile) Then '// check if file exists.
            For Each itm As String In File.ReadAllLines(myCoolFile) '// load file content in Array.
                If Not itm = "" Then '// verify that line has content.
                    With itm '// locate ctl by name and add value to it.
                        CType(Me.Controls(.Substring(0, .IndexOf(":"))), Control).Text = .Substring(.IndexOf(":") + 1)
                    End With
                End If
            Next
        End If
    End Sub
End Class
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