How to manually drop down a DataGridViewComboBoxColumn?

Question

I have a DataGridView with one DataGridViewComboBoxColumn in my WinForms application. I need to drop down (open) this DataGridViewComboBoxColumn manually, let\'s say after a

Answer 1

I was looking for an answer to this as well. I ended up writing a generic sub that could be called from any DataGridView since I had plenty in my apps and I wanted them all to behave the same way. This worked well for me so I wanted to share it with anyone else who stumbled across this post.

In the MouseClick event for the DGV I add the code

Private Sub SomeGrid_MouseClick(sender As Object, e As MouseEventArgs) Handles SomeGrid.MouseClick
    DGV_MouseClick(sender, e)
End Sub

Which calls the following sub that I store in a shared module

Public Sub DGV_MouseClick(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs)
    Try
        Dim dgv As DataGridView = sender
        Dim h As DataGridView.HitTestInfo = dgv.HitTest(e.X, e.Y)
        If h.RowIndex > -1 AndAlso h.ColumnIndex > -1 AndAlso dgv.Columns(h.ColumnIndex).CellType Is GetType(DataGridViewComboBoxCell) Then
            Dim cell As DataGridViewComboBoxCell = dgv.Rows(h.RowIndex).Cells(h.ColumnIndex)
            If Not dgv.CurrentCell Is cell Then dgv.CurrentCell = cell
            If Not dgv.IsCurrentCellInEditMode Then
                dgv.BeginEdit(True)
                CType(dgv.EditingControl, ComboBox).DroppedDown = True
            End If
        End If
    Catch ex As Exception
    End Try
End Sub

I never caught any errors, I only include the Try..Catch code for some rare instance I couldn't think of that might throw an exception. I didn't want the user bothered by error messages for this scenario. If the sub fails, then most likely the DGV will just behave like it normally does anyways.