Continuous Form Dependent Combo Box

Once you have mastered the simple case of a dependent combo box on a single-record form it is time to move up to having a dependent combo box on a multi-record or continuous form layout.

We haven't come up with a truly seamless solution but we have managed to use a small trick to make the continuous form dependent combo box work.

In this downloadable example we overlay a simple text field on top of the combo box text area.  This overlay technique essentially hides the combo box records that don't have focus.  The text field is a dlookup for the Student Name based on the Student_ID selected in the combo box dropdown.

You can add additional code to the example to have the combo box automatically drop down when the user enters it.

I think the only problem with this method is the blinking of all the combo box fields when a value is changed - maybe this is just on my computer since it is slow.

Try out our Continuous Form Dependent Combo Box example.

Perhaps after you try this method for dependent combo box on continuous forms you'll come up with some variations to the method or a completely different method.  We would be happy to post your solutions on our website.

Also, this method can be extended to multiple, cascading dependent combo boxes as well as list boxes. We have run this code on all versions of Microsoft Access including Access 2010.