Suggestions for ValidationSummary HeaderText

johna by | June 6, 2014 | ASP.NET Web Forms Web Development

I often use the standard ASP.NET ValidationSummary to display form validation error messages but often struggle what to write for the Headertext property.

Best practice these days tends towards inline validation error messages rather than a summary, but there's still a place for the old ValidationSummary.

After a little research online, here are some suggestions for header text:

"There are some errors, please correct them below."

"The following errors were encountered:"

"There was a problem with your submission."

"There were some problems with the information you provided"

"Sorry, but an error has been made."

On the subject of validation, best practice also says to not tell the user what they did wrong, instead tell them what they need to do to fix the problem.

For example, instead of saying "Email is blank" you would say "You must enter an email address".

Do you have any other suggestions for header text? Leave me a comment.

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