Hi. This is getting extremely frustrating. I have struggled for more
than three hours now with this:

I have a gridview, GridView1, which works great reading/editing/
deleting the data from a table. I need, however, to block editing and
deleting of some special rows (the rows which have an "ActionTaken"
field containing the word "Manually".

So here is a simplified HTML:

<asp:GridView
    ID="GridView1"
    DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1"
    DataKeyNames="ID"
    AutoGenerateColumns="False"
    ShowFooter="True"
    OnRowUpdating="GridView1_RowUpdating"
    OnRowEditing="GridView1_RowEditing"
    OnRowDataBound="GridView1_RowDataBound"
    Runat="server"

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Action Type">
         <ItemTemplate>
             <asp:Label ID="ActionTakenLabel" Runat="Server" ><%#
Eval("ActionTaken")%></asp:Label>
         </ItemTemplate>
         <EditItemTemplate>
            <asp:DropDownList
                  ID="ActionTakenComboBox"
                  AutoPostBack="false"
DataSourceID="SqlDataSource2"                      DataTextField="ActionTaken"
                  DataValueField="ActionTaken"
      Runat="server"
                  Text='<%# Eval("ActionTaken")%>'>
            </asp:DropDownList>
         </EditItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>

I would want to CANCEL the editing based on the value in ActionTaken,
so therefore:

protected void GridView1_RowEditing(object sender,
System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridViewEditEventArgs e)
{
               String strActionType = ((DropDownList)
(GridView1.Rows[e.NewEditIndex].FindControl("ActionTakenComboBox"))).SelectedValue;
               if (strActionType.IndexOf("Manually") >= 0)
    {
        // Cancel the edit operation.
        e.Cancel = true;
        String strMessage;
        strMessage = "You cannot edit this record.";
        Response.Write("<script language='javascript'>alert('" + strMessage
+ "');</script>");
    }
}

Even if the gridview reads the data okay, and looks great, in the code-
behind the dropdownlist "ActionTakenComboBox" is ALWAYS NULL, and so
are all the other controls I have tried to read (like
ActionTakenLabel).

I have tried reading them with
  GridView1.Rows[e.NewEditIndex].Cells[any possible cell index]
  GridView1.Rows[any other possible index].Cells[any possible cell
index]
with the same result.

I have also tried to see if I can see those values in the
OnRowDataBound event. I can still not find my value ("Manually Added")
which, however, shows just fine in the gridview.

I have even tried to somehow block the editing in the
GridView1_RowCommand event:
((Label)
(GridView1.Rows[Convert.ToInt32(e.CommandArgument)].FindControl("ActionTakenLabel"))).Text
which returns ""
or
((DropDownList)
(GridView1.Rows[Convert.ToInt32(e.CommandArgument)].FindControl("ActionTakenComboBoxEdit"))).SelectedValue;
which says
'((System.Web.UI.WebControls.ListControl)
(((System.Web.UI.WebControls.DropDownList)
(GridView1.Rows[Convert.ToInt32(e.CommandArgument)].FindControl("ActionTakenComboBoxEdit")))))'
is null

I have also tried wo write code in the OnPreRender event...
What should I do here to block editing of those records ?

Thank you very much
Alex.