Accessing methods between forms

Question

I have Form1 and Form2. Form1 is the main form for the application, form2 is created by form1 when you click a button.
Inside Form2 I have a method called showmessage that is public and part of the Form2 class.
In form1, I create an instance of the form2 object and then call the show method and it pops up. Then I attempt to call the form2.showmessage function that I wrote but can't get to it.
What gives?
I'm new to C# and trying to get past this learning curve. Would appreciate any help you could give me.
Thanks
glenn

Scott Lysle · Answer

It is interesting that the demo did not work for you; I just checked it, it works fine including the intellisense.  As Mike Gold mentioned, the key to making this work is providing public access which is not the default condition.

Mike Gold · Answer

Hi Glenn,
The way I talk between forms is to simply pass a pointer from form1 to form2 into the constructor and keep a reference to it.
e.g.
private Form1 _form;
Form2(Form1 form)
{
_form = form;
}
public void MyMethodToCallForm1()
{
_form.DoCalculation();
}
However looking back at your post, it might be that you forgot to make your form2 method have public access.

Glenn · Answer

what do you have to do to get returns on this forum? So far all my posts are crunching everything together into 1 long line of statements.

Glenn · Answer

Actually no, it didn't help at all. Let me describe the situation again just to be sure its clear.
1) Look at the link you sent and his two forms. I have the exact same thing going on.
2) The difference is, I have written a custom method inside form2 that takes a string and shows it in a messageBox.
3) Form1 knows the instance of Form2 because it created it already. But I can not see any of the class functions of form2 from form1.
And just for your information, the demo that you sent me to doesn't work either. When you do what he did and you attempt to access any of fom1's fields from form2, they do not show in intelisense and they won't compile if you try to just type them anyway.
Thanks,
glenn

Scott Lysle · Answer

This might be of interest to you.  This is an example of communicating between forms without using events and delegates.
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/scottlysle/LimitedDataXfer01302007012304AM/LimitedDataXfer.aspx?ArticleID=98b894ff-2a4d-42b6-8aa7-7c0b210e001f