Tim Mackey's Weblog

my aspx page uses a master page, so all the content is inside a ContentPlaceHolder. 
aparently Page.FindControl() only works within a single container, which is really poor functionality if you ask me. 
to complicate the situation further, my aspx page has dynamic controls inside a Panel. 
in order to access the controls of my user control, from the code-behind of the page, i first had to find the panel and then the user control, and then i could finally use that to find the controls i wanted. 
note: you don't have to use the client ID of the control ...ctrl00_blah_blah_blah_YourControlName... when you use the above method, you just use the name of the control, e.g. txtFirstName.