Nancy - thank you for the code. It didn't all come through, but I got the gist of it. I don't know what you mean by "reply with the code".
However, I made your code run OK in a little prg. Then I made a simple form visually with only a combobox and used your properties. It worked also. But my form still doesn't work, even though I've double-checked the important properties: boundcolumn, columncount, rowsource, controlsource. Must be something else in my form. It is a very complex form with many other comboboxes (all with rowsource = fields) and other controls. My displayvalue is (None).
I think my next step is work with my simple form and add controls to it to simulate my real form. Maybe at some point it will refuse to work and I'll know the answer.
Joe