Eeeee. I hate to say it, but basically you need to dump the combo box IMHO.

#1. combos have a nasty 254 (255th?) element bug for cursor rowsource cbos.
#2. They are verrrrrrrry slow in grids. I couldn't even deal with a 100 item combo list.
#3. Ick! < s >

The standard solution I've read here and other places has been working well for me, tho' I resisted it for a long time. Use grids for displaying info and use controls outside of the grid for actual editing.

The time I save in mucking about with grids and cbo is well worth it. Plus I sleep better at night!

Good luck.

>I have a modal form that is being called from a command button on a maintenance form. The modal form contains a grid. One of the columns in grid contains a combo box that accesses a table with about 5000 records.
>
>Here is a list of the problems I am having:
>
>First: When the modal form is finished loading, 'most' of the time you can still see the controls from the underlying maintenance form. It apppears that the modal form's background is transparent!
>
>Second: The combo box accessing 5000 records is VERY slow. The screen is constantly redrawing everytime the user tries to select an item in the drop-down combo box.
>
>Third: Moving from row to row in the grid is very slow. I'm sure this has to do with the large number of records in the combo box.
>
>Any suggestions?