Modifying the Width and Length of a Pull-Down (Combo Box)

How do you change properties of a pull-down. This is called a combo box on a Microsoft Access form. For example, the person might want to modify the number of things about the combo box such as making a column wider, displaying more choices at once or displaying different information.

The following is a bare bones explanation on how to do some of these changes. You can go on the internet and search for a more detailed explanation under: “Microsoft Access” modify combo boxes.

Getting ready to modify things

1. Open the form you want to change in the design mode, e.g., inpCallback
2. Go to the combo box that you want to change, click on the white data entry / combo box with the gray arrow box in the corner.
3. (If the property box does not show up on the right of the screen) Right click and go to the bottom of the list and choose Properties
4. The properties are divided into tabs, the ALL tab displays all of the properties, Format deals with the way things look, etc.

Changing the width of columns or the number of items displayed at one time

1. The properties we are interested in are displayed under the Format tab.
2. Changing a column width:
   1. The Column width property effects how wide each column is.
   2. Column count shows how many columns are displayed
   3. Look at the combo box and determine which column you want to change. For example, the third column.
   4. Go to the Column width row and count over that number, for example you might see: .5”, 2”, 1” We are interested in the 1” (the screen shot is of a different field).
   5. Make the change you want to the width, for example, change the 1” to a 2”.
   6. Now you need to change the List Width property to display everything. Set the List Width by adding up the widths of all the columns and adding .2 to allow for the scroll bar. In this example we would take and add , .5” + 2” + 2” + .2 and put the resulting 4.7” in the List Width property.
3. Changing the number of items displayed
   1. The List Rows property limits how many choices will show up at a time in the combo box. 8 or 16 is the normal amount.
   2. Tell staff to type the value they want the first column to show. The combo box will take them to the first occurrence of that choice. For example, if they wanted to choose Smith, they should type in Smith and the combo box should scroll you to the first entry with that value.

Changing what is displayed

1. The Data Tab controls what is displayed. This should not be modified unless you know exactly what you are doing. Making changes here could cause the system to slow down drastically by returning too many records or end up putting the wrong data into the field.
2. The Bound Column property controls which column stores it’s data in the field.
3. The contents of a combo box can be:
   1. a typed in list
   2. a table
   3. a query based on a table
   4. a field list

Displaying the meaning of the code instead of or in addition to the code

1. By manipulating either the width of a field, the bound column or several other ways, you can cause the meaning of the code to be displayed but send the value of the code to the field, e.g. Problem code could show ‘Divorce’ but store ‘32’.
2. You can also display the meaning of a code by putting in a different field next to the input field that gets its meaning from the input field.