Passing variables between windows forms in VS 2010 - vb.net

Question

I have two forms. Form 1 allows the user to pick an employee from a dropdown combo box. That employee is then passed onto Form 2 where the user enters additional information regarding that employee. That data will then be passed into a SQL table.
On form 1 I have:
Dim ChangeJobInfo As New Form2(Employee)
ChangeJobInfo.Show()
On Form 2 I have:
Public Sub New(ByVal Employee As String)
MsgBox(Employee)
End Sub
The variable passes just fine. The issue is that nothing shows up on the new form. When I setup Form2, I added a combobox, date picker, two text boxes, submit button, etc., but when the form loads it is completely blank. No errors, the MsgBox returns the right result, but none of my gui elements show up. If I change the code on form 1 to Form2.show() I see the form as laid out in the designer.
Any ideas on how to get those items to show up?

Answer 1

Change your code in Form2.vb for the New sub to this:
Public Sub New(ByVal Employee As String)
' This call is required by the designer.
InitializeComponent()
' Add any initialization after the InitializeComponent() call.
MsgBox(Employee)
End Sub
If you don't call InitializeComponent(), your complete GUI is not going to render.

Answer 2

You don't even have to use the InitializeComponent or New functions.
I have made an example to show how easily this can be done.
Clicking "Show Form" results in the below:
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Form2.Show()
End Sub
which is simply used to display the second form.
By clicking "Pass Data" results in the following code:
Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
Form2.Label1.Text = TextBox1.Text
End Sub
As shown above you can pass the data directly from control to control. The same idea can be used with variables too.

Answer 3

I am late but I think this answer can help.
For example, Form1 named "menu" opens and passes variable to Form2 named "ordine".
The variable to pass is "hotel"
In menu on button_click
Dim ordinef As New Ordine()
If ordinef Is Nothing Then
'control that form is not opened yet if open close before
ordinef = New Ordine()
Else
ordinef.Close()
ordinef = New Ordine()
End If
ordinef.hotel = hotel
ordinef.Show()
In Form2 (Ordine):
Private Sub Ordine_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
public hotel as string
msgbox hotel
That's it!!