Invisible text in combo box

[Toff]

Hi,

I am working in a Access 2000 database and I have a few combo boxes where the text is almost always invisible. The text is there if you highlight over it, just invisible.

The Control Source is empty as I am using these cbo's in the form header to populate the body of the form via a query.

.visible is true, text color is black, giving it the focus at a later time will sometimes make the text visible. I read a long time ago about this being a bug in 2000. Going into design mode then back into form mode will pretty much always make the text visible but obviously the users cannot do that.

Anyone have any idea how to make the text always show up (assuming I explained the problem well enough to be understood)?

 

[Kryst51]

I don't know how to fix it, but this article seems to have a work around for it, it might help you at least do more searching.:

There are other cases where Access fails to display data also. Another common one involves a combo box with a zero-width bound column and a RowSource assigned dynamically in the form's Current event. Again, the combo displays completely white even though the value can be read from its Column() property. If the combo has focus, the reverse-video selection is the right number of characters wide, but Access is not displaying the text. This appears to be a timing issue, i.e. the RowSource provides the Column data after the screen has been drawn. (It is different from the perfectly valid case where the Row Source is restricted in such a way that there is nothing in the Column for Access to display.)

 

[Toff]

Yup, thats the page I found long ago. Couldn't find it this time.

Thanks as it gives me some hints at least.

 

[Toff]

FYI:

This is a workaround. I narrow the cbo so only the right side dropdown box is showing then put a text box next to it so it looks like a normal cbo.

Then I do this as referenced in http://allenbrowne.com/bug-06.html

You can sometimes work around this problem by placing a text box behind the combo, forcing it to read the value of the display column. For example, if the combo is named Combo1 and the second column is displayed, set the text box's Tab Stop property to No and Control Source to:
=[Combo1].[Column](1)

Its not perfect but good enough.