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How to: Group Items in a Windows Forms ListView Control

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With the grouping feature of the ListView control, you can display related sets of items in groups. These groups are separated on the screen by horizontal group headers that contain the group titles. You can use ListView groups to make navigating large lists easier by grouping items alphabetically, by date, or by any other logical grouping. The following image shows some grouped items.

Screenshot of odd and even ListView groups.

To enable grouping, you must first create one or more groups either in the designer or programmatically. After a group has been defined, you can assign ListView items to groups. You can also move items from one group to another programmatically.

To add groups

  1. Use the Add method of the Groups collection.

    // Adds a new group that has a left-aligned header
listView1.Groups.Add(new ListViewGroup("List item text",
    HorizontalAlignment.Left));

    ' Adds a new group that has a left-aligned header
ListView1.Groups.Add(New ListViewGroup("Group 1", _
 HorizontalAlignment.Left))

To remove groups

  1. Use the RemoveAt or Clear method of the Groups collection.

    The RemoveAt method removes a single group; the Clear method removes all groups from the list.

    Note

    Removing a group does not remove the items within that group.

    // Removes the first group in the collection.
listView1.Groups.RemoveAt(0);
// Clears all groups.
listView1.Groups.Clear();

    ' Removes the first group in the collection.
ListView1.Groups.RemoveAt(0)
' Clears all groups:
ListView1.Groups.Clear()

To assign items to groups or move items between groups

  1. Set the ListViewItem.Group property of individual items.

    // Adds the first item to the first group
listView1.Items[0].Group = listView1.Groups[0];

    ' Adds the first item to the first group
ListView1.Items.Item(0).Group = ListView1.Groups(0)

See also