title: Page Lifecycle - Using FindControl to reference a control created programmatically during page load
body: <p>I'm creating some text boxes on my form programmatically which I need to reference later using FindControl.</p>
  
  <p>I've put the FindControl instruction in the page load method after the code which creates them but get an error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><strong>Object reference not set to an instance of an object.</strong></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I assume this is because the textbox controls are not created until later in the lifecycle and therefore cannot be referenced from within Page_Load. </p>
  
  <p>Can someone advise where in my code-behind I would need to place the FindControl instruction so that it can find these programmatically created text boxes?</p>