We present results on excitonic transitions and confinement at high electric fields from photocurrent and electroreflectance spectra of an In0.17Ga0.83As/Al0.3Ga0.7As strained quantum well structure fabricated into a Schottky barrier diode. Up to the highest field attained, 1.7×105V/cm, we observe a well‐defined exciton line at the band edge (in contrast to data on similar GaAs/Al0.3Ga0.7As structures), a feature important for potential optoelectronic applications. At low fields, ‘‘allowed’’ (&Dgr;n=0) transitions dominate the photocurrent spectra, but with increasing field ‘‘forbidden’’ transitions (allowed because of reduced symmetry and valence‐band mixing) grow in intensity and eventually dominate the above‐gap response. In the electroreflectance spectra, the forbidden transitions are relatively strong, even at low field. The allowed above‐gap transitions nearly vanish at low temperature because of the small field dependence of the higher lying quantum well energy levels.