I am pretty sure in an earlier installation of visual studio I was able to hit F2 in the winforms designer to directly change the .Text property of the selected Winforms-Control (i.e. button).
This way I did not have to switch over to the property-window to search the .Text property. A nice time saving feature.
Unfortunately my active installation of VS 2017 doesnt support this or it is not activated in the settings, which I cant find an option for.
I'd appreciate if you could name me the option if you are aware of it.
F2 is typically tied to loading the Object Browser.
You should be able to select the control and start typing. When you select a control with the Property Window open, you should see that the Text property is automatically selected, but not in edit mode (the cursor is not in the input box). It jumps to edit as soon as you start typing.