The end of June marks the first anniversary of the TechTIP eNewsletter, and I look forward to bringing you more tips, hints, and how-to articles throughout the coming year.  Don't forget that Corbitt Associates provides consulting and outsourcing for a variety of sales, marketing and training needs, in addition to full and half-day workshops.  See ABOUT Corbitt Associates at the bottom of the article for typical workshop topics.

I find the easiest way to create drop-down (Combo) boxes, option buttons, check boxes, etc. is to select them from the toolbar.  If the Forms aren't on your toolbar, select View/Toolbars and Check the Forms selection.  The example below was created using the Combo box three times.  Click on the Combo box icon on the toolbar and then define a box with your mouse, and an empty Combo box will be created.  Right click on the combo box and select Format Control, when the Format Control menu opens, select the Control tab.  To enter the Input Range location I selected the cells where I had previously typed Master Card, VISA and AmEx.  Cell link provides data related to your selection that you can perform additional operations on, but is not required.  Enter a number for drop down lines that is equal to the number of possible selections, in this case, 3.  Finally, check the 3-D shading box for a pleasant effect, and that's it.  You can see the selections being made in Example 1 and the final result in Example 2.

Example 1: Making Selections

Example 2: Final Result

Use of the forms options can improve the appearance of your application, speed data entry and reduce input errors.  Try the other forms options to see how you can implement these useful functions in your applications.