Auto Completion in C# Drop Down List Control

The DropDownList and List Control enrich the UI design for their WinForms applications and allow developers build amazing user interface for the drop down and list on the forms for their .NET Windows Forms projects. The Kettic Drop Down and List control offers large flexibility to auto complete the user’s type by suggesting and appending text from selections of the list. Developers can use the Drop Down List Auto Complete Mode property to control auto completion behavior. The valid value of the property includes None, Suggest, Append and SuggestAppend.

The following are the C# code that shows how to configure the auto complete modes.

None Mode of Auto Complete, this mode determines nothing will happen when any new text are input into the text box. Only if users input the complete Item text into the box and hit Enter key, the item can be chosen.

this.dropDownList.AutoCompleteMode = AutoCompleteMode.None;

Suggest Mode of Auto Complete, this mode will display the items from the drop-down portion of the control, which are filtered based on the text that users typed into the text box.

this.dropDownList.AutoCompleteMode = AutoCompleteMode.Suggest;

Append Mode of Auto Complete, this mode will display the items matching the text that user typed and automatically append to the text that the user input. Users need to click the arrow to display the drop down list.

this.dropDownList.AutoCompleteMode = AutoCompleteMode.Append;

SuggestAppend Mode of Auto Complete, this mode, resembling the Append mode, displays the drop down list and highlights the suggested items.

this.dropDownList.AutoCompleteMode = AutoCompleteMode.SuggestAppend;