Dear Bill,

Thanks for the ideas. I was able to set the ControlSource to none. I read in a VFP book that you can't use ControlSource when you want someone to type into a combobox because it blanks out the entry (which is what was happening).

And I used your idea to look at THISFORM.Value to save the entry when not selected from a dropdown list.

And I read that I could put THIS.DisplayValue = myTable.myCity in the Refresh of the control and display the record when I read it.

Pretty cool. Happy it all works now. I learned something new. The only bad thing is to allow someone to type in a city name means I have to expand the field to hold a city name, not just a city code of 3 chars. But I don't want to assign city codes to little used cities where there might only be a one-time usage of that particular city name. That's why I don't want to add the name to the dropdown list either.

Thanks again. I appreciate the ideas. You got me thinking today.