Is there a way to convert a listbox to a combo box?

agerber85 · February 25, 2022, 3:11pm

My title sums up my question. I have several complex forms that I created before realizing that I wanted the behavior of the combo box rather than the behavior of the listbox (e.g., the ability to type the target in). I would hate to have to re-create them. Is there an easy way to convert them?

Version: 7.0.6.2 (x64)
Build ID: 144abb84a525d8e30c9dbbefa69cbbf2d8d4ae3b
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19042; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Villeroy · February 25, 2022, 3:15pm

Ctrl+click
Right-click > Replace with > whatever

agerber85 · February 25, 2022, 4:54pm

Also, I should add a note of caution that if someone is going to do this and they have multiple columns in the sql of their listbox contents so that an index can be stored, that will all go away, since Combo Box ignores anything after the first field and will only store the value selected. Also, for macro purposes, combo box controls do not have a “.selectedValue” property.

agerber85 · February 25, 2022, 6:11pm

Actually, my original post is a bit of a moot point, even though @Villeroy’s answer is a very handy way of converting a control into another control type.
Really, I can think of no reason to convert a listbox to a combobox (or to use a combobox in the first place), since it appears the typing behavior of listbox mirrors that of combobox since after the resources I was reading. I just stumbled across something suggesting that this is the case, and after testing it, I feel like a bafoon for even trying to convert them, and wasting everyone’s time searching for how.

Villeroy · February 26, 2022, 12:11pm

A field of mostly repeating but not strictly categorized strings. Similar to “AutoComplete” in Calc.

agerber85 · February 26, 2022, 1:06pm

Your right! I can see how that would be a good use case.

agerber85 · February 28, 2022, 1:57pm

Arg! I was wrong again! The typing behavior of listbox only mirrors combobox nominally, and it’s buggy. The mechanism for detecting a pause from the user during typing is way too sensitive, and considers nearly any amount of time between keystrokes a pause and starts over (instead of appending the rest of the keystrokes to the initial one). To make matters worse, the devs don’t have anyone working on bugs in Base, and this one has been reported and ignored for five years.