RadGridView with ItemsSource of ObservableCollection<string> does not allow row additions or edits

Updated on Sep 15, 2025

Environment

Product Version	2019.1.220
Product	RadGridView for WPF

Description

Since RadGridView is designed to work with collections of business objects, a lot of the core functionality would not work when the ItemsSource of the control is set to a collection of strings.

Solution

In order to avoid that, we can create a simple wrapper class around the string data.

C#

	public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            var wrappedData = from str in new List<string>() { "one", "two", "three" }
                              select new StringWrapper { Text = str };

            this.gridView.ItemsSource = wrappedData;
        }
    }
    
    public class StringWrapper
    {
        public string Text { get; set; }
    }

XAML

	<telerik:RadGridView x:Name="gridView" />