How to add sort icon, up or down arrow, in the WinForms Grid Control?

Add sort icon, up-down arrow in the grid

By default, there is no built-in support to display a sort icon in the Header CellType. You can achieve this by using the following workaround.

Solution

You can add the GridSortColumnHeaderCellModel to the GridControl's cell model to add sort icon in the HeaderCell. Then, assign the added cell model as the CellType and set the Tag property to either ListSortDirection.Ascending or ListSortDirection.Descending to show the up/down arrow mark.

The following code example is for adding GridSortColumnHeaderCellModel to the gridcontrol.CellModel.

//Adding the column Header cell
this.gridControl1.CellModels.Add("ColumnHeaderCell", new GridSortColumnHeaderCellModel(this.gridControl1.Model));
this.gridControl1[0,1].CellType = "ColumnHeaderCell";

//Setting the Sort Order as Ascending for the first column
this.gridControl1[0,1].Tag = ListSortDirection.Ascending;
this.gridControl1[0,2].CellType = "ColumnHeaderCell";

//Setting the Sort Order as Descending  for the Second column
this.gridControl1[0,2].Tag = ListSortDirection.Descending;

'Adding the column Header cell
Me.gridControl1.CellModels.Add("ColumnHeaderCell", New GridSortColumnHeaderCellModel(Me.gridControl1.Model))
Me.gridControl1(0,1).CellType = "ColumnHeaderCell"

'Setting the Sort Order as Ascending for the first column
Me.gridControl1(0,1).Tag = ListSortDirection.Ascending
Me.gridControl1(0,2).CellType = "ColumnHeaderCell"

'Setting the Sort Order as Descending  for the Second column
Me.gridControl1(0,2).Tag = ListSortDirection.Descending

In the following screenshot, Columns A and B have a sort icon.

Samples:

C#: AddingSortIcon-C#

VB: AddingSortIcon-VB

Note:

In this workaround, the sort icon is added only to the column. When you want to perform a sorting operation as per the sort direction, you can refer to the following sample. \AppData\Local\Syncfusion\EssentialStudio\<Installed version>\Windows\Grid.Windows\Samples\Grid Layout\Sorting Demo in a sample browser.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed learning about how to add sort icon, up or down arrow, in the WinForms Grid Control.

You can refer to our WinForms GridControl feature tour page to know about its other groundbreaking feature representations and WinForms GridControl documentation, and how to quickly get started for configuration specifications.

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