Ted,

>I wish to data drive the dropdown list. Per your guidance in the jump starts I am able to implement a similar non-grid dropdown. I believe I have created one via a field template and assume the row must be in edit mode to invoke it.

>Thus do I need to use something like the "Edit, Update, Cancel" control to put a row in edit mode?

>Would I be able to to put all the rows in a gridview in edit mode so the user could change the dropdown for each record then save?

NO, you don't need Edit, Update, Cancel buttons...if you want the combo boxes to always be active, just drag and drop an mmDropDownList into the Item template rather than the Edit template for that column.

To get the dropdownlist's currently selected value to bind, edit the template column's data bindings (by clicking the smart tag on the template column) and in the DataBindings dialog, select the "Custom Binding" option and enter an expression like this:

Bind("NameOfTheColumn")

Best Regards,