Solution: The operation could not be completed. Invalid FORMATETC structure

Bert Loedeman — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:29:15 +0000

This morning I ran into a ASP.NET bug in Visual Studio. Dragging a custom server control on an aspx file was not possible since I had ‘an invalid FORMATETC structure’ (what the …. is that?!). The message box alerting me something is really really wrong is this one:

Trying to solve the bug, I found the following attribute to be the problem: [ToolboxItem(true)]. Just delete the attribute, rebuild the application and the problem/bug disappears!

Good luck! Happy coding!

Set MasterPage (.master) title from a web form (.aspx)

Bert Loedeman — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:12:00 +0000

Lots of people complain about not being able to change the master page’s title using ASP.NET 2.0 and up. A commonly seen tutorial is to use the following piece of code:

((HtmlTitle) Page.Master.FindControl("lblTitle")).Text =
    "Set some kind of title";

In most of the cases you need to change the master page’s title, you do not have to bother about this. Just use the correct page stadium and set the page’s title. The only page event to be able to do this is Page_PreInit (since master page and content page are still separate ‘pages’ in this stadium). The following will work (if you have AutoEventWireup enabled ):

protected void Page_PreInit(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Title = "Set some kind of title";
}

DotBert » aspx

Solution: The operation could not be completed. Invalid FORMATETC structure

Set MasterPage (.master) title from a web form (.aspx)