Locked for editing; the cursor can enter the cell but you can't edit or change anything, and the drop down button is disabled. This is what I want in certain circumstances. However, after doing the DisplayLayout.LoadFromXml("MyLayout.xml") I don't seem able to re-enable the locked columns. Sorry I don't have a sample - the screen actually has 6 grids on different tabs and is part of a much larger application. Extracting it for a demo would be a job in itself.

Hi, 

I don't think the file you attached is the correct one. This does not appear to be an UltraGridLayout xml file. The file you attached here is only 3 lines of XML and does essentially nothing. 

If the DisplayLayout.Override, the Band.Override, and the column are all set to allow editing, then the other possibilities to disallow editing on a cell would be the row.

So you could check your code to see if you are setting "Activation" on the row or cell. 

You could also, at run-time, get a reference to one of those cells and output: cell.ActivationResolved just to see what it returns. If it's returning anything other than AllowEdit, then we know that some property setting in the grid is the issue here. 

Another possibility is that your data source simply doesn't allow editing. But that would have nothing to do with loading a layout. So unless you are loading a layout and ALSO changing the data source, that wouldn't make sense. 

One final possibility is that you are handling some grid event like BeforeEnterEditMode and setting e.Cancel to true. That would prevent the cell from editing, as well. 

So this layout file is setting the CellActivation property on the "Entity" and Location columns to Disabled.
And it sets the CellActivation property on the "Total" column to NoEdit. 

AllowUpdate and CellClickActionon the Override for the DisplayLayout and the Band Override both allow editing. So that's not the problem. 

That's a little confusing, because it sounds like you are saying that you can click in the cell and get a caret, but you can't type. If the column was disabled, then you would not be able to enter edit mode and get a caret at all.

So it sounds like either the CellActivation is set to one of the other settings like ActivateOnly or NoEdit. Perhaps it's getting set somewhere else in your code? 

Or... I think that might be the behavior you'd get if your data source doesn't allow editing. 

Or maybe something in your application is just eating the keystrokes, like the KeyDown event? Seems unlikely. 

Ok, I fixed it. Turns out that there was a second recall layout going on after the one I was looking at. Once I did these three lines AFTER the final recall layout it was all good:

grdGrid.DisplayLayout.Bands(0).Columns("Entity").CellActivation = Activation.Disabled
grdGrid.DisplayLayout.Bands(0).Columns("Entity").CellAppearance.BackColor = Me.BackColor
grdGrid.DisplayLayout.Bands(0).Columns("Entity").CellAppearance.ForeColorDisabled = Color.Black

Thanks for your help on this!