ASP.NET control in GridView not found to exist in code behind

Question

I have a DropDownList that I would like to populate with column values from a DataBase. However, when I try to bind the DropDownList in code behind, the IDE keeps telling me:

Answer 1

You can't directly populate GridView's dropdownlist like this. You need to set datasource of GridView first i.e.

GridView1.DataSource = DataSource

And if you would like to access dropdownlist of this gridview, you can use RowDataBound event handler of GridView i.e.

protected void GridView1_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
    //Checking whether the Row is Data Row
    if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
    {
        //Finding the Dropdown control.
        Control ctrl = e.Row.FindControl("EqpCatDDL");
        if (ctrl != null)
        {
            DropDownList dd = ctrl as DropDownList;
            List lst = new List();
            dd.DataSource = lst;
            dd.DataBind();
        }
    }
}