Introduction to the Browse For Folder Dialog Box

When this dialog box comes up, it displays the Desktop folder as the parent and all the other folders can be located from it. To use it, the user can click one of the folders or drives and click OK. If the desired folder is not seen but is available, the user can expand the existing folders and drives, click the desired folder, and click OK. If the necessary folder is not available at all, the user can first select an existing folder or drive, click the Make New Folder button, type a name for the new folder, and click OK.

Besides the folders, the Browse For Folder dialog box also allows the user to navigate to folders or directories of the network.

The Browse For Folder dialog box is made available through the FolderBrowserDialog class that is derived from the CommonDialog class. To provide its functionality to your application, at design time, from the Toolbox, click FolderBrowserDialog and click the form.

To programmatically initiate this dialog box, you can declare a pointer to FolderBrowserDialog, use the New operator to allocate memory for it by calling its default constructor. Here is an example:

Module Exercise

    Public Class Starter
        Inherits Form

        Private FolderBrowser As FolderBrowserDialog

        Dim components As System.ComponentModel.Container

        Public Sub New()
            InitializeComponent()
        End Sub

        Public Sub InitializeComponent()

            FolderBrowser = New FolderBrowserDialog

        End Sub

    End Class

End Module

To display the Browse For Folder dialog box, call its ShowDialog() method. Here is an example:

Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Windows.Forms

Module Exercise

    Public Class Starter
        Inherits Form

        Private FolderBrowser As FolderBrowserDialog

        Dim components As System.ComponentModel.Container

        Public Sub New()
            InitializeComponent()
        End Sub

        Public Sub InitializeComponent()

            FolderBrowser = New FolderBrowserDialog

        End Sub

        Private Sub FormLoader(ByVal sender As Object, _
                               ByVal e As EventArgs) _
                               Handles Me.Load
            
            FolderBrowser.ShowDialog()

        End Sub
    End Class

    Function Main() As Integer

        Dim frmStart As Starter = New Starter

        Application.Run(frmStart)

        Return 0
    End Function

End Module

This would produce:

By default, and as seen on the above screenshot, the Browse For Folder dialog box doesn't indicate what it is used for. This is because it is left to you to let the user know what you expect. To provide this information, the Browse For Folder dialog box is equipped with a label that can be made visible or not. It is available through the Description property. If you provide a string for this property, it would display under the title bar but above the tree view of the dialog box. If you add the FolderBrowserDialog control to the form, you can type a string in the Description field in the Properties window. You can also programmatically assign a string to the FolderBrowserDialog object. Here is an example:

Private Sub FormLoader(ByVal sender As Object, _
                               ByVal e As EventArgs) _
                               Handles Me.Load
            FolderBrowser.Description = _
                "Select the directory where your " & _
                "future configurations will be installed"
            
            FolderBrowser.ShowDialog()

End Sub

This would produce:

As you can see from this screenshot, when the dialog box comes up, it selects the Desktop, by default, as the parent folder. If you want, you can specify a different default folder to be selected. This information is carried by the RootFolder property. The RootFolder value must be a member of the SpecialFolder enumerator of the Environment class. For example, to select My Documents, you would type the following:

Private Sub FormLoader(ByVal sender As Object, _
                               ByVal e As EventArgs) _
                               Handles Me.Load
            FolderBrowser.Description = _
                "Select the directory where your " & _
                "future configurations will be installed"

            FolderBrowser.RootFolder = Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal

            FolderBrowser.ShowDialog()
End Sub 

This would produce:

Since there is only a limited number of folders of the SpecialFolder enumerator, you may want to specify a different folder. The advantage of the SpecialFolder option is that it is likely to be found on the user's computer. If you know for sure that a certain folder exists on the computer and you would rather select that folder, you can provide its complete path to the SelectedPath property. Here is an example:

Private Sub FormLoader(ByVal sender As Object, _
                               ByVal e As EventArgs) _
                               Handles Me.Load
            FolderBrowser.Description = _
                "Select the directory where your " & _
                "future configurations will be installed"
            FolderBrowser.SelectedPath = "C:\Programs\Corporate"
            FolderBrowser.ShowDialog()
End Sub

This would produce:

You should not specify both the RootFolder and the SelectedPath properties on the same FolderBrowserDialog control.

After the user has used the Browse For Folder dialog box, has selected a folder, and clicked OK, to find out what folder the user selected, get the value of the SelectedPath property.

After using the Browse For Folder dialog box, the user may select a folder and click OK. Imagine you are creating a commercial application, you can't possibly know the content of every customer's computer. This means that there is a possibility that the user would not find the desired folder. One solution you can use is to give users the ability to create a new folder. This option is available by default. If you want to prevent the user from creating a new folder, hide the Make New Folder button. To do this, assign a false value to the ShowNewFolderButton Boolean property. You can do this in the Properties window at design time or programmatically as follows:

Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Windows.Forms

Module Exercise

    Public Class Starter
        Inherits Form

        Private FolderBrowser As FolderBrowserDialog

        Dim components As System.ComponentModel.Container

        Public Sub New()
            InitializeComponent()
        End Sub

        Public Sub InitializeComponent()

            FolderBrowser = New FolderBrowserDialog

        End Sub

        Private Sub FormLoader(ByVal sender As Object, _
                               ByVal e As EventArgs) _
                               Handles Me.Load
            FolderBrowser.Description = _
                "Select the directory where your " & _
                "future configurations will be installed"
            FolderBrowser.SelectedPath = "C:\Programs\Corporate"
            FolderBrowser.ShowNewFolderButton = False
            FolderBrowser.ShowDialog()

        End Sub
    End Class

    Function Main() As Integer

        Dim frmStart As Starter = New Starter

        Application.Run(frmStart)

        Return 0
    End Function

End Module

This would produce:

You can also check the value of the ShowNewFolderButton property to find out whether the dialog box is equipped with a Make New Folder button.