>hmmm... have made some progress since I posted the original. What I find is that the listboxes ARE indeed being updated by the data. BUT I wasn't able to see the effect because I had the depth of the list box set to the same 1 character height as all the other fields and most of the time the selected list item was selected but not visible in the 'window' I offered it. The solution was to expand the listbox to the five lines or so required by these particular lists. Whilst this worked, in that I could now see the appropriate items being highlighted in the list as we moved between records, this is clearly a bizarre solution and utterly inappropriate if your list of options runs into dozens, hundreds or thousands! So presumably there is a more elegant answer.

Harry,

If you want a one line list control then you should use the combobox with the it set to dropdown list style. This displays the current value while concealing the list until the user clicks on the combobox. The list then drops down out of the combo.

A listbox is designed to display more than one row of data at a time. It does not have to display all of the rows it has. Setting the value to an item that is in the list will make that item highlighted and visible in the list, with the surrounding values also visible but not highlighted.