>Is there a way to force the background of a textbox to be transparent even when the textbox has focus? I have a scenario in which I need the object behind the textbox to show through even when the textbox has focus and have noted that even if the Backstyle property is set to "Transparent", it "reverts" to opaque while the textbox object has focus.
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Try setting the SelectedBackColor property to the background you want, eg:

this.SelectedBackColor = this.parent.backcolor