Refereing to a visual studio control property is simple like mybutton.Text="whatever"You cannot do the same with a user control , refering to properties of a user control is diabolical .Why? Why the difference ? User controls have unique Id's by which their properties should easily be accessible , something like: mycontrol5.controlbutton.Text="something" Visual Studio 2005 is buggy enough without Microsoft trying to deliberetly make it more akward .