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Select the clicked Item of a RadTreeView

Updated on Sep 24, 2025

This tutorial will show you how to select the item that was clicked, while opening the RadContextMenu. In order to achieve this, you have to do the following things:

Handle the Opened event of the RadContextMenu
Get an instance of the clicked RadTreeViewItem
Set the SelectedItem of the RadTreeView

Before starting, here is a sample RadTreeView with a sample RadContextMenu attached.

XAML

	<telerik:RadTreeView x:Name="radTreeView">
	    <telerik:RadContextMenu.ContextMenu>
	        <telerik:RadContextMenu x:Name="radContextMenu">
	            <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Menu Option 1" />
	            <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Menu Option 2" />
	            <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Menu Option 3" />
	        </telerik:RadContextMenu>
	    </telerik:RadContextMenu.ContextMenu>
	    <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Category1">
	        <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Product1" />
	        <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Product2" />
	        <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Product3" />
	    </telerik:RadTreeViewItem>
	    <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Category2" />
	    <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Category3" />
	    <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Category4">
	        <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Product A" />
	        <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Product B" />
	        <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Product C" />
	    </telerik:RadTreeViewItem>
	    <telerik:RadTreeViewItem Header="Category5" />
	</telerik:RadTreeView>

To handle the Opened event attach an event handler to it.

XAML

	<telerik:RadContextMenu x:Name="radContextMenu1" 
	                        Opened="RadContextMenu_Opened">
	    <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Menu Option 1" />
	    <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Menu Option 2" />
	    <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Menu Option 3" />
	</telerik:RadContextMenu>

C#
	private void RadContextMenu_Opened( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e )
	{
	}
VB.NET
	Private Sub RadContextMenu_Opened(sender As Object, e As RoutedEventArgs)
	End Sub

In it get the instance of the clicked RadTreeViewItem by calling the GetClickedElement<T>() method of the RadContextMenu.

C#
	private void RadContextMenu_Opened(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
	{
	    RadTreeViewItem item = this.radContextMenu.GetClickedElement<RadTreeViewItem>();
	}
VB.NET
	Private Sub RadContextMenu_Opened(sender As Object, e As RoutedEventArgs)
	    Dim item As RadTreeViewItem = Me.radContextMenu.GetClickedElement(Of RadTreeViewItem)()
	End Sub

The last thing to do is to set the SelectedItem property of the RadTreeView to the instance of the RadTreeView item that has been clicked.

If you are having a dynamic data scenario, where the RadTreeView is bound to a collection, you have to set the SelectedItem property to the DataContext of the clicked RadTreeViewItem.

C#
	private void RadContextMenu_Opened(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
	{
	    RadTreeViewItem item = this.radContextMenu.GetClickedElement<RadTreeViewItem>();
	    if (item != null)
	    {
	        this.radTreeView.SelectedItem = item;
	    }
	}
VB.NET
	Private Sub RadContextMenu_Opened(sender As Object, e As RoutedEventArgs)
	    Dim item As RadTreeViewItem = Me.radContextMenu.GetClickedElement(Of RadTreeViewItem)()
	    If item Is Nothing Then
	        Me.radTreeView.SelectedItem = item
	    End If
	End Sub

Select the clicked Item of a RadTreeView

See Also