In a DataGridView, it is sometimes convenient to have a column that is a DateTime that allows a user to use the standard DateTimePicker control for choosing dates. Microsoft has a code sample for a CalendarColumn class that does this, and it's more or less the standard. Except if you actually try to use it in a WinForms application, you'll find it has two rather glaring flaws: If you try to type in a date, and you don't type in a full two digits for the month or date or four digits for the year and then tab out of the control, your change won't be committed. If you type in a date or part of a date and tab through to the same column in the next row, and you start typing, the first field highlighted (month, date, year) will be the last field highlighted when you left the last row. (Example: you type in "04/04/2009", tab until the next row's date column, and start typing "04", you'll find you're editing that date's year.) I found this forum thread that addresses the first concern. ALight's answer involves adding an event handler to the DataGridView's CellValidating event. Because we use grids all over the application, it would've been very inconvenient to alter every grid and add this code. Instead, since our grids are built dynamically, I did it by adding this code to the CalendarColumn class (that inherits DataGridViewColumn): protected override void OnDataGridViewChanged() { base.OnDataGridViewChanged(); if (this.DataGridView != null) { this.DataGridView.CellValidating += new DataGridViewCellValidatingEventHandler(CalendarDataGridView_CellValidating); } } protected void CalendarDataGridView_CellValidating(object sender, DataGridViewCellValidatingEventArgs e) { if (sender is DataGridView) { DataGridView dgv = (DataGridView)sender; if (e.ColumnIndex >= 0 && e.ColumnIndex < dgv.Columns.Count && e.RowIndex >= 0 && e.RowIndex < dgv.Rows.Count) { if (dgv.Columns[e.ColumnIndex] is CalendarColumn && dgv.Columns[e.ColumnIndex] == this) { if (dgv.EditingPanel != null) dgv.EditingPanel.Select(); } } } } When the CalendarColumn is added to the grid's Columns collection, its DataGridView property is updated, and this routine fires to bind the method to the grid's CellValidating event. Multiple columns will cause multiple event handlers to be bound, but the dgv.Columns[e.ColumnIndex] == this part of the if statement should ensure that only one instance will run the code for any given column. (Note that I have not tested this in cases where columns may be removed from the grid. It should probably work fine, as the event will still be bound and still fire, but the column will never match.) To solve the second problem, I did some experimentation with the existing control methods. In Microsoft's sample, there is a comment in the CalendarEditingControl's method PrepareEditingControlForEdit that reads "No preparation needs to be done." I found this to be not quite correct. The following change resets the control so, when you start typing, you start editing on the month, like you'd expect: public void PrepareEditingControlForEdit(bool selectAll) { if (selectAll) base.RecreateHandle(); } Seems to work so far, anyway.