Set hint or watermark or default text for ComboBox without adding it as item

Question

So, I\'m trying to put some text showing up on the ComboBox before it has a selection made by the user.

That text should not be an item, selectable by t

Answer 1

Ahh, dropdownlist. That ignores the .Text property by only allowing it to be set from an item in the items list.

However. You can manipulate that list I guess by handling the addition and removal of an item so that it's not seen in the dropdown

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //add an item to the combobox at the top
            comboBox1.Items.Insert(0, "Please select an item");
        //set the text
            comboBox1.Text = "Please select an item";
    }

    private void comboBox1_DropDown(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //when we click to open the dropdown, we remove that item
        if (comboBox1.Items.Contains("Please select an item"))
            comboBox1.Items.RemoveAt(0);
    }

    private void comboBox1_DropDownClosed(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //when we close the dropdown, if we select an item the dropdown
        //displays that item, if now we set back to our text.
        if (comboBox1.SelectedIndex == -1)
        {
            comboBox1.Items.Insert(0, "Please select an item");
            comboBox1.Text = "Please select an item";

        }

    }

and depending on if your code would reset the form without a form_load being called, you would probably need something in the SelectedIndexchanged event to cover if you somewhere set the combobox's selectedindex back to -1 as this code wouldn't cover that.