Adding RadControls to Visual Studio Toolbox in .NET Framework Projects

Telerik UI for WinForms are automatically added to Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010/2012/2013/2015/2017/2019/2022 Toolbox during installation. If however they do not appear in the toolbox after the installation, you can do this manually. There are two ways to manually add Telerik UI for WinForms to the Toolbox in your Visual Studio.

This article is relevant when using .NET Framework. For .NET Core or newer versions, please refer to NET Core Toolbox Version.

Using the Visual Studio menus

1. Run Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010/2012/2013/2015/2017/2019/2022.

2. Open any windows forms project/solution.

3. Expand the Toolbox.

4. Right-click the Toolbox in the empty area underneath and choose Add Tab to create a new tab. Name the tab "Telerik UI for WinForms".

5. Right-click in the empty space of the newly created tab and select Choose Items. A dialog will open, which lists all available controls from the assemblies in the GAC.

   If you do not see Telerik WinForms controls, please see the Troubleshooting section below.

6. Sort the assemblies by name and navigate to Telerik assemblies. Select all corresponding Telerik Controls (except for FilteredPropertyGrid) and click OK to finish the operation.

7. All Telerik UI for WinForms should appear in the toolbox and you can start using them right away.

Using the drag-drop approach

1. Run Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010/2012/2013/2015/2017.

2. Open any windows forms project/solution.

3. Expand the Toolbox.

4. Right-click the Toolbox in the empty area underneath and choose Add Tab to create a new tab. Name the tab "Telerik UI for WinForms".

5. Open a Windows Explorer and locate the Telerik assemblies folder.  

   If you have installed the controls with the default settings then it would be this directory: 'C:\Program Files\Telerik\UI for WinForms\Version\Bin' or 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Progress\Telerik UI for WinForms R2 2019'. For the .NET2.0 version the assemblies are in the 'Bin' folder, for the .NET4.0 version the assemblies are in the 'Bin40' folder (note that currently RadRichTextEditor and RadSpellChecker are only available in the .NET4.0 version).

6. Select the following assemblies and drag-drop them to the empty space in the newly created tab in Visual Studio:

   • Telerik.WinControls.SpellChecker.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.GridView.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.RadChart.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.RadDiagram.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.RadDock.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.RadMarkupEditor.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Scheduler.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Aqua.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Breeze.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Desert.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.HighContrastBlack.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Office2007Black.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Office2007Silver.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Office2010Black.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Office2010Blue.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Office2010Silver.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.TelerikMetro.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Windows7.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.UI.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.ChartView.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Office2013Dark.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Office2013Light.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.TelerikMetroBlue.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.TelerikMetroTouch.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Material.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.MaterialPink.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.MaterialBlueGrey.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.MaterialTeal.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.VisualStudio2012Dark.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.VisualStudio2012Light.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Windows8.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Fluent.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.FluentDark.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.Crystal.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.CrystalDark.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.PdfViewer.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.PivotGrid.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.RichTextEditor.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.RadMap.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.RadSpreadsheet.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.SyntaxEditor.dll

   • Telerik.WinControls.Themes.VisualStudio2022.dll

Resetting the toolbox through the Reset context command will remove the tools from the toolbox. If you need to reset the toolbox, just add the controls as described above.

Troubleshooting

Telerik assemblies do not appear in Visual Studio's Add reference dialog

Make sure that the Telerik WinForms controls are added in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) as described in the Add/Remove RadControls to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) topic.

Telerik assemblies do not appear in Visual Studio's Add reference dialog although they are added in the GAC

To display your assembly in the Add Reference dialog box, you can add a registry key, such as the following, which points to the location of the assembly:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\Telerik UI for WinForms Q1 2014]@="C:\Program Files\Telerik\UI for WinForms\Q1 2014\bin\"

Change this according to your installation and version specifics. Restart Visual Studio .NET after you have added the key.

note You can create the this registry entry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive. This will change the setting for all of the users on the system. If you create this registry entry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, this entry will affect the setting for only the current user. 

More information about this topic you could find in Microsoft Support Center: How to display an assembly in the "Add Reference" dialog box

Repetitive RadControls entries in the Toolbox

We have identified several occurrences of multiple/duplicated ToolBox items existing in the Visual Studio Toolbox. Unfortunately these seem to stem from a glitch in Visual Studio, which was still not reproduced reliably so that we can fix it, or ask Microsoft for a fix.

Below are the different kinds of occurrences and their possible fixes:

• Duplicate Toolbox items, remaining two entries per control:

  • this could be a result of having parallel Telerik UI for WinForms installations, which is the correct behavior (Visual Studio 2008 only)

  • this could be the result of an improper underregistration of an older Telerik UI for WinForms distribution, followed by the registration of the newer one. Usually either of the two approaches below helps fixing the problem:

    • Close Visual Studio instances, start Windows Explorer, navigate to %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0 and delete the *.tbd files

    • Right-click the Toolbox inside Visual Studio and click Reset

• Multiple entries per control, number increasing with each start of the IDE: this is the worst scenario we have come across. All the registry entries and files on the customer machine seemed fine in this case. The only fix we were able to apply was a complete uninstall of Telerik UI for WinForms and Visual Studio 2010, followed by a clean install of the IDE and the suite.

See Also

• How to Deal with Multiplied Controls in Toolbox