scrollbars in JTextArea

java, swing

Solution

As Fredrik mentions in his answer, the simple way to achieve this is to place the `JTextArea` in a `JScrollPane`. This will allow scrolling of the view area of the `JTextArea`.

Just for the sake of completeness, the following is how it could be achieved:

JTextArea ta = new JTextArea();
JScrollPane sp = new JScrollPane(ta);   // JTextArea is placed in a JScrollPane.

Once the `JTextArea` is included in the `JScrollPane`, the `JScrollPane` should be added to where the text area should be. In the following example, the text area with the scroll bars is added to a `JFrame`:

JFrame f = new JFrame();
f.getContentPane().add(sp);

Thank you kd304 for mentioning in the comments that one should add the `JScrollPane` to the container rather than the `JTextArea` -- I feel it's a common error to add the text area itself to the destination container rather than the scroll pane with text area.

The following articles from The Java Tutorials has more details:

- How to Use Scroll Panes

- How to Use Text Areas

Problem

Original source