c# WinForms can you get the NumericUpDown text area

You can get this by using a Label control instead of the baked-in TextBox control. Add a new class to your project and paste the code shown below. Compile. Drop the new control from the top of the toolbox onto your form.

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;

class UpDownLabel : NumericUpDown {
    private Label mLabel;
    private TextBox mBox;

    public UpDownLabel() {
        mBox = this.Controls[1] as TextBox;
        mBox.Enabled = false;
        mLabel = new Label();
        mLabel.Location = mBox.Location;
        mLabel.Size = mBox.Size;
        this.Controls.Add(mLabel);
        mLabel.BringToFront();
    }

    protected override void UpdateEditText() {
        base.UpdateEditText();
        if (mLabel != null) mLabel.Text = mBox.Text;
    }
}

If you want do disallow manual editing, you can just set ReadOnly property to true.

updown.ReadOnly = true;

If you want to disallow selecting too (I wonder why you need this), you can use reflection. I don't think there's better way, because the field upDownEdit is internal field of UpDownBase.

FieldInfo editProp = updown.GetType().GetField("upDownEdit", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
TextBox edit = (TextBox)editProp.GetValue(updown);
edit.Enabled = false;

Set the ReadOnly property to true, that's all.

The 'proper' way to do this is to create an Up-Down control and a Label (the label can't be selected or edited). However, the authors of Windows Forms, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that we don't need the Up-Down control and so they didn't provide a .NET wrapper for one. They decided that the only reason we could ever want an Up-Down control is when paired with a TextBox control.

The Up-Down control is simple enough to create a light wrapper if you want to go this route: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb759880.aspx

Edit 1

[snip]

Edit 2

I blogged about it here: http://tergiver.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/using-the-up-down-control-in-windows-forms/