A pager row is displayed in a System.Web.UI.WebControls.FormView control when the paging feature is enabled (when the FormView.AllowPaging property is set to true). The pager row contains the controls that allow the user to navigate to the different pages in the control. Instead of using the built-in pager row user interface (UI), you can define your own UI by using the FormView.PagerTemplate property.

To specify a custom template for the pager row, first place <PagerTemplate> tags between the opening and closing tags of the System.Web.UI.WebControls.FormView control. You can then list the contents of the template between the opening and closing <PagerTemplate> tags. To control the appearance of the pager row, use the FormView.PagerStyle property.

Typically, button controls are added to the pager template to perform the paging operations. The System.Web.UI.WebControls.FormView control performs a paging operation when a button control with its CommandName property set to "Page" is clicked. The button's CommandArgument property determines the type of paging operation to perform. The following table lists the command argument values supported by the System.Web.UI.WebControls.FormView control.