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Applies to:
Visual Studio
Visual Studio for Mac
Visual Studio Code
In this tutorial, you'll create a Visual Basic application that has a Windows Forms user interface.
The Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) includes all the tools you need to create a Windows Forms app.
In this tutorial, you learn how to:
Create a project
Add a button to the form
Add a label and code
Run the application
Prerequisites
You need Visual Studio to complete this tutorial.
Visit the
Visual Studio downloads page
for a free version.
You need Visual Studio to complete this tutorial.
Visit the
Visual Studio downloads page
for a free version.
Create a project
Create a Visual Basic application project.
The project type comes with all the template files you'll need, before you've even added anything.
Open Visual Studio.
On the start window, choose
Create a new project
.
On the
Create a new project
window, select the
Windows Forms App (.NET Framework)
template for Visual Basic.
You can refine your search to quickly get to the template you want.
For example, enter
Windows Forms App
in the search box.
Next, select
Visual Basic
from the
Language
list, and then
Windows
from the
Platform
list.
If you don't see the
Windows Forms App (.NET Framework)
template, you can install it from the
Create a new project
window.
In the
Not finding what you're looking for?
message, choose the
Install more tools and features
link.
Next, in the Visual Studio Installer, choose the
.NET desktop development
workload.
After that, select
Modify
in the Visual Studio Installer. You might be prompted to save your work.
In the
Configure your new project
window, enter
HelloWorld
as the
Project name
. Then, select
Create
.
Visual Studio opens your new project.
On the
Create a new project
window, select the
Windows Forms App (.NET Framework)
template for Visual Basic.
You can refine your search to quickly get to the template you want.
For example, enter
Windows Forms App
in the search box.
Next, select
Visual Basic
from the
Language
list, and then
Windows
from the
Platform
list.
If you don't see the
Windows Forms App (.NET Framework)
template, you can install it from the
Create a new project
window.
In the
Not finding what you're looking for?
message, choose the
Install more tools and features
link.
Next, in the Visual Studio Installer, choose the
.NET desktop development
workload.
After that, select
Modify
in the Visual Studio Installer. You might be prompted to save your work.
In the
Configure your new project
window, enter
HelloWorld
as the
Project name
. Then, select
Create
.
Visual Studio opens your new project.
After you select your Visual Basic project template and name your file, Visual Studio opens a form for you.
A form is a Windows user interface.
You'll create a "Hello World" application by adding controls to the form.
On the left side of the Visual Studio IDE, select the
Toolbox
tab.
If you don't see it, select
View
>
Toolbox
from the menu bar or
Ctrl
+
Alt
+
X
.
If you want, select the
Pin
icon to dock the
Toolbox
window.
Select the
Button
control and then drag it onto the form.
In the
Appearance
section of the
Properties
window, for
Text
, type
Click this
, and then press
Enter
.
If you don't see the
Properties
window, you can open it from the menu bar. Select
View
>
Properties Window
or press
F4
.
In the
Design
section of the
Properties
window, change the name from
Button1
to
btnClickThis
, and then press
Enter
.
If you've alphabetized the list in the
Properties
window,
Button1
appears in the
(DataBindings)
section, instead.
Add a label and code
Now that you've added a button control to create an action, add a label control to send text to.
Select the
Label
control in the
Toolbox
window, and then drag it onto the form.
Place it beneath the
Click this
button.
In either the
Design
section or the
(DataBindings)
section of the
Properties
window, change the name
Label1
to
lblHelloWorld
, and then press
Enter
.
In the
Form1.vb [Design]
window, double-click the
Click this
button to open the
Form1.vb
window.
Another option is to expand
Form1.vb
in
Solution Explorer
, and then select
Form1
.
In the
Form1.vb
window, between the
Private Sub
and
End Sub
lines, enter
lblHelloWorld.Text = "Hello World!"
as shown in the following screenshot:
Run the application
Your application is ready to build and run.
Select
Start
to run the application.
Several things happen.
In the Visual Studio IDE, the
Diagnostics Tools
window opens, and an
Output
window opens.
Outside of the IDE, a
Form1
dialog box appears.
It includes your
Click this
button and text that says
Label1
.
Select the
Click this
button in the
Form1
dialog box.
The
Label1
text changes to
Hello World!
.
Close the
Form1
dialog box to stop running the app.
Next steps
To learn more about Windows Forms, continue with the following tutorial:
Tutorial: Create a picture viewer
See also
More Visual Basic tutorials
C# tutorials
C++ tutorials
