totn Access 2007 Combo Boxes

MS Access 2007: Width of columns in combo box

This MSAccess tutorial explains how to set the widths of the columns listed in the drop-down portion of the combo box in Access 2007 (with screenshots and step-by-step instructions).

Column Widths property

This is now what our combo box looks like:

Microsoft Access

The next property to configure on our combo box is the Column Widths. In Access 2007, the Column Widths property indicates how wide each column in the combo box will display.

Since we've selected two columns to display (CategoryID and CategoryName), we need to set this property.

Now if this is the first time that you have built a combo box, you might be surprised that we are returning 2 columns. It is quite common in database design to link your field to a numeric value, but since the number is meaningless to your user, you want to display the descriptive value in the combo box.

In this case, our first field is in our result set is CategoryID and the second field is CategoryName. So we set the Column Widths property to 0;3 (which means 0 inches for the first field and 3 inches for the second field). You can play with these numbers to find the right size for you.

This will hide the numeric value (found in CategoryID) and display the CategoryName (as 3 inches wide) in the combo box.

Microsoft Access