Bob,
Thanks for the sample...
It worked, as advertised... I had to convert it to OLE VB.Net to match my environment, but after that it worked!
Thank you.

You wouldn't believe what I had to do to get MY stuff to work!

I copied your pattern faithfully (I believe) and still couldn't get mine to work. I even commented out all my code and rebuilt my web form with just the new Page_Load and one click event and it still didn't work. I even deleted everything that didn't look like your example, and it still didn't work!
In the end I copied my app's visual stuff, panel by panel, into the working sample... retesting after each little change... and it always worked. Then I started copying over the code behind the controls... retesting after each little change... and it always worked.

In the end I had copied everything I could find in my app (except the automatically generated stuff), which didn't work, into the sample build on your code, and in the end it worked.

I still have no idea why it wouldn't work in the other/original app.
Any ideas? I'd love to not fall into this trap again!

again...THANKS!!!!

Rick

>>>>My form has several DropDownLists on it. I want to populate them from tables, as I think I mentioned...
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>Ok...
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>I created a web form... put two ddl's and a button. I named the first control ddlAuthors and the second ddlTitles. When I run the code, I select items from the combos.. then I press the submit... when the page reloads my selections are intact. Here is my code from the page_load event:
>
>

>if (! IsPostBack)
>....lots of neat stuff...
>