<p>I'm using the <a href="http://www.asp.net/AJAX/AjaxControlToolkit/Samples/AutoComplete/AutoComplete.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">AutoComplete</a> control from the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and I'm experiencing an issue where the AutoComplete does not populate when I set the focus to the assigned textbox.  </p>

<p>I've tried setting the focus in the Page_Load, Page_PreRender, and Page_Init events and the focus is set properly but the AutoComplete does not work.  If I don't set the focus, everything works fine but I'd like to set it so the users don't have that extra click.  </p>

<p>Is there a special place I need to set the focus or something else I need to do to make this work?  Thanks.</p>

We had exactly the same problem.  What we had to do is write a script at the bottom of the page that quickly blurs then refocuses to the textbox.  You can have a look at the (terribly hacky) solution here:
http://www.drive.com.au
The textbox id is
```
MainSearchBox_SearchTextBox
```
.  Have a look at about line 586 & you can see where I'm wiring up all the events (I'm actually using prototype for this bit.
Basically on the focus event of the textbox I set a global var called
```
textBoxHasFocus
```
to true and on the blur event I set it to false.  The on the load event of the page I call this script:
```
```
if (textBoxHasFocus) {
    $get("MainSearchBox_SearchTextBox").blur();
    $get("MainSearchBox_SearchTextBox").focus();
}
```
```
This resets the textbox.  It's really dodgy, but it's the only solution I could find