How do I show a "Loading . . . please wait" message in Winforms for a long loading form?

Using a separate thread to display a simple please wait message is overkill especially if you don't have much experience with threading.

A much simpler approach is to create a "Please wait" form and display it as a mode-less window just before the slow loading form. Once the main form has finished loading, hide the please wait form.

In this way you are using just the one main UI thread to firstly display the please wait form and then load your main form.

The only limitation to this approach is that your please wait form cannot be animated (such as a animated GIF) because the thread is busy loading your main form.

PleaseWaitForm pleaseWait=new PleaseWaitForm ();

// Display form modelessly
pleaseWait.Show();

//  ALlow main UI thread to properly display please wait form.
Application.DoEvents();

// Show or load the main form.
mainForm.ShowDialog();

I looked at most the solutions posted, but came across a different one that I prefer. It's simple, doesn't use threads, and works for what I want it to.

http://weblogs.asp.net/kennykerr/archive/2004/11/26/where-is-form-s-loaded-event.aspx

I added to the solution in the article and moved the code into a base class that all my forms inherit from. Now I just call one function: ShowWaitForm() during the frm_load() event of any form that needs a wait dialogue box while the form is loading. Here's the code:

public class MyFormBase : System.Windows.Forms.Form
{
    private MyWaitForm _waitForm;

    protected void ShowWaitForm(string message)
    {
        // don't display more than one wait form at a time
        if (_waitForm != null && !_waitForm.IsDisposed) 
        {
            return;
        }

        _waitForm = new MyWaitForm();
        _waitForm.SetMessage(message); // "Loading data. Please wait..."
        _waitForm.TopMost = true;
        _waitForm.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterScreen;
        _waitForm.Show();
        _waitForm.Refresh();

        // force the wait window to display for at least 700ms so it doesn't just flash on the screen
        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(700);         
        Application.Idle += OnLoaded;
    }

    private void OnLoaded(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Application.Idle -= OnLoaded;
        _waitForm.Close();
    }
}

MyWaitForm is the name of a form you create to look like a wait dialogue. I added a SetMessage() function to customize the text on the wait form.

You want to look into 'Splash' Screens.

Display another 'Splash' form and wait until the processing is done.

Here is an example on how to do it.