--- title: "RichTextBox Control Overview" ms.date: "03/30/2017" f1_keywords: - "RichTextBox" helpviewer_keywords: - "RichTextBox control [Windows Forms], about RichTextBox control" - "text boxes [Windows Forms], about text boxes" ms.assetid: 95081194-3dd4-4b84-9545-dd373e491eca --- # RichTextBox Control Overview (Windows Forms) The Windows Forms control is used for displaying, entering, and manipulating text with formatting. The control does everything the control does, but it can also display fonts, colors, and links; load text and embedded images from a file; and find specified characters. The control is typically used to provide text manipulation and display features similar to word processing applications such as Microsoft Word. Like the control, the control can display scroll bars; but unlike the control, its default setting is to display both horizontal and vertical scrollbars as needed, and it has additional scrollbar settings. ## Working with the RichTextBox Control As with the control, the text displayed is set by the property. The control has numerous properties to format text. For details on these properties, see [How to: Set Font Attributes for the Windows Forms RichTextBox Control](how-to-set-font-attributes-for-the-windows-forms-richtextbox-control.md) and [How to: Set Indents, Hanging Indents, and Bulleted Paragraphs with the Windows Forms RichTextBox Control](set-indents-hanging-indents-bulleted-paragraphs-with-wf-richtextbox.md). To manipulate files, the and methods can display and write multiple file formats including plain text, Unicode plain text, and Rich Text Format (RTF). The possible file formats are listed in . You can use the method to find strings of text or specific characters. You can also use a control for Web-style links by setting the property to `true` and writing code to handle the event. For more information, see [How to: Display Web-Style Links with the Windows Forms RichTextBox Control](how-to-display-web-style-links-with-the-windows-forms-richtextbox-control.md). You can prevent the user from manipulating some or all of the text in the control by setting the property to `true`. You can undo and redo most edit operations in a control by calling the and methods. The method enables you to determine whether the last operation the user has undone can be reapplied to the control. ## See also - - [RichTextBox Control](richtextbox-control-windows-forms.md) - [TextBox Control Overview](textbox-control-overview-windows-forms.md)