at run time I want to be able to save a datatable into properties.Settings so that it can persist throughout my application, then all forms can retrieve the same data from this datatable. How can I achieve this?

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Achievement provides the ultimate pleasure in life

You stated that you want persistence through the lifetime of your application. That does not requires Properties.Settings which is for persistence between application instances (i.e. persisted to disk).

All you need to do is create a singleton or static class to hold the DataTable.

public static class Globals
{
    public static DataTable MyTable;
}

Globals.MyTable can be accessed anywhere in your application. Where you load it is up to you. You might do it in Main for instance.

static void Main()
{
    Globals.MyTable = new DataTable();
    ... // fill the table
}

Data Table's serialization is not documented and could change between versions. Why not just use a simple array?

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Visual C++ MVP

thanks for your quick reply. did you mean using a 2 dimensional array?

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Achievement provides the ultimate pleasure in life

Not sure what is your actual data structure. DataTable isn't a 2D array. 

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Visual C++ MVP

sorry for asking silly questions, but what are the XML-serializable types and which particular one is most suitable for my case?

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types that mark itself as serializable. Take a look at ASMX and XmlSerialization forum for details.

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Visual C++ MVP

You stated that you want persistence through the lifetime of your application. That does not requires Properties.Settings which is for persistence between application instances (i.e. persisted to disk).

All you need to do is create a singleton or static class to hold the DataTable.

public static class Globals
{
    public static DataTable MyTable;
}

Globals.MyTable can be accessed anywhere in your application. Where you load it is up to you. You might do it in Main for instance.

static void Main()
{
    Globals.MyTable = new DataTable();
    ... // fill the table
}