Hi Patricio,

Based on my understanding, you have a user control that contains a public
property of a custom type. When you drag the user control on a form, the
public custom type property is shown in the Properties window but the sub
properties of the custom type are not shown under the custom type property,
ie. the custom type property is not expandable. If I'm off base, please
feel free to let me know.

You need to apply the ExpandableObjectConverter to the custom type to make
the custom type property expandable. For example:

[TypeConverter(typeof(ExpandableObjectConverter))]
   public class Person
   {
       private string id;
       private string name;
       public string ID
       {
           get { return id; }
           set { id = value; }
       }
       public string Name
       {
           get { return name; }
           set { name = value; }
       }
   }

In addition, you must expose a ShouldSerializePropertyName method that
returns a bool in the user control to enable serialization of properties of
complex types. Internally, the Windows Forms Designer looks for a method
named ShouldSerializePropertyName to ask whether the property should be
serialized. From the Windows Forms Designer's point of view, it doesn't
matter whether your ShouldSerializePropertyName is public or private, but
choosing private removes it from client visibility.

For example:
public partial class UserControl1 : UserControl
   {
       public UserControl1()
       {
           InitializeComponent();          
       }
       private Person p = new Person();
       public Person P
       {
           get { return p; }
           set { p = value; }
       }
       bool ShouldSerializeP()
       {
           return true;
       }
   }

Hope this helps.
If you have any question, please feel free to let me know.

Sincerely,
Linda Liu
Microsoft Online Community Support

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