Outlook Style Datagrid

(iGrid.NET Control Tour, Step 6 of 9)

iGrid.NET is a first-class Microsoft Outlook style datagrid for WinForms:

Outlook style datagrid control for WinForms

One of the distinctive features of Microsoft Outlook is its message preview inside the message list. As you can see from the above picture, our WinForms grid provides you with this functionality too. Message preview in iGrid is emulated with the so-called row text cell. Every iGrid row can optionally display it below the normal cells of the row - like message preview in the Outlook datagrid. Note that the height of row text cell may vary from row to row.

A useful option for the whole Outlook-like grid is the ability to specify the start and end columns to display the contents of row text cells. For instance, the screenshot of the Outlook style datagrid above demonstrates that the first 3 columns aren't used to emulate the Microsoft Outlook message preview - they are used for message icons. The same concerns the last column: it is a flag cell that occupies the whole row height.

Row text cells have the same properties like normal cells. All iGrid.NET cell formatting options like font, custom colors, text trimming, etc. can be applied to them.

Another interesting functionality you can find in our Outlook style datagrid is the ability to group values into intervals. An example of that is the Size column in Microsoft Outlook. If you group the Outlook grid by this column, size intervals like Small, Large or Enormous are used to get a more convenient representation of data. The screenshot above also illustrates this feature of our WinForms Outlook style grid.

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