How to hide columns in an ASP.NET GridView with auto-generated columns?

Try putting the e.Row.Cells[0].Visible = false; inside the RowCreated event of your grid.

protected void bla_RowCreated(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
    e.Row.Cells[0].Visible = false; // hides the first column
}

This way it auto-hides the whole column.

You don't have access to the generated columns through grid.Columns[i] in your gridview's DataBound event.

Note: This solution only works if your GridView columns are known ahead of time.

It sounds like you're using a GridView with AutoGenerateColumns=true, which is the default. I recommend setting AutoGenerateColumns=false and adding the columns manually:

<asp:GridView runat="server" ID="MyGridView"
    AutoGenerateColumns="false" DataSourceID="MySqlDataSource">
    <Columns>
        <asp:BoundField DataField="Column1" />
        <asp:BoundField DataField="Column2" />
        <asp:BoundField DataField="Column3" />
    </Columns>
</asp:GridView>

And only include a BoundField for each field that you want to be displayed. This will give you the most flexibility in terms of how the data gets displayed.

I was having the same problem - need my GridView control's AutogenerateColumns to be 'true', due to it being bound by a SQL datasource, and thus I needed to hide some columns which must not be displayed in the GridView control.

The way to accomplish this is to add some code to your GridView's '_RowDataBound' event, such as this (let's assume your GridView's ID is = 'MyGridView'):

protected void MyGridView_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
    {
        e.Row.Cells[<index_of_cell>].Visible = false;
    }
}

That'll do the trick just fine ;-)

You have to perform the GridView1.Columns[i].Visible = false; after the grid has been databound.

@nCdy: index_of_cell should be replaced by an integer, corresponding to the index number of the cell that you wish to hide in the .Cells collection.

For example, suppose that your GridView presents the following columns:

CONTACT NAME | CONTACT NUMBER | CUSTOMERID | ADDRESS LINE 1 | POST CODE

And you want the CUSTOMERID column not to be displayed. Since collections indexes are 0-based, your CUSTOMERID column's index is..........? That's right, 2!! Very good. Now... guess what you should put in there, to replace 'index_of_cell'??

Iterate through the GridView rows and make the cells of your target columns invisible. In this example I want to keeps columns 4-6 visible as is, so we skip those:

foreach (GridViewRow row in yourGridView.Rows)
   {
     for (int i = 0; i < rows.Cells.Count; i++)
     {
        switch (i)
        {
           case 4:
           case 5:
           case 6:
              continue;
        }
        row.Cells[i].Visible = false;
     };
   };

Then you will need to remove the column headers separately (keep in mind that removing header cells changes the length of the GridView after each removal):

grdReportRole.HeaderRow.Cells.RemoveAt(0);