Drop down list width

[Pmpkin]

I want a drop down list with selections that are several sentences long. How do I increase the width allowed for a drop down list?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Assuming you're speaking of the dropdown available from the Forms
toolbar, there is a hard-coded limit of 50 characters per entry (and
also a limit of 25 entries). There is no way to change that.

If you use the ComboBox from the Control Toolbox toolbar, there's no
hard character limit. However, if an entry is longer than will fit on
one line at the width of the box, the rest of it won't be shown.
Setting the display font of a combobox to 8 pt Arial Narrow and making
the box 6 inches wide, I could just fit the entire first sentence of
the Gettysburg Address (176 characters). The combobox control that you
can use on a userform has similar behavior.

Another alternative that might work for you is an AutoTextList field
(see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/AutoTextList.htm). The
items in the dropdown (the names of AutoText entries) would have to be
short descriptions, but choosing one would result in display of the
entire entry -- which could be as much text as you want.

 

[Chad DeMeyer]

For this I would do something similar to the AutoTextList field that Jay
mentioned, but in a UserForm, with a combo box containing the abbreviated
choices, and a label or textbox whose contents were changed automatically to
display the entire entry based on what was selected in the combo box. Add
command buttons Insert and Cancel, and you're ready to go.

Regards,
Chad DeMeyer

I want a drop down list with selections that are several sentences long.

How do I increase the width allowed for a drop down list?

 

[Pmpkin]

The Auto Text worked great. When I tried to send the new form to another user the Auto Text entries don't appear on their computer. How do I send the Autotext along with the letter to other users?

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Your AutoText will be stored in your template, normal.dot by default. You
need to be sending the template.

The Auto Text worked great. When I tried to send the new form to another

user the Auto Text entries don't appear on their computer. How do I send
the Autotext along with the letter to other users?

 

[Jay Freedman]

If you are sending a template, *don't* send your normal.dot -- it has a lot
more customizations in it than just AutoText. Create a new template from
your document (use File > Save As and set the file type to Word Template).
Then go to Tools > Templates and Add-Ins, click the Organizer button, and
copy the AutoText entries from Normal.dot to the new template.

When you first create an AutoText entry, if you use the Insert > AutoText >
AutoText dialog instead of the Alt+F3 shortcut, you can specify which
template the entry will be saved in, so you can avoid the extra step of the
Organizer. See http://www.word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/AutoText.htm.

Also, on the topic of sending templates, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/DistributeMacros.htm. Although it talks
mostly about macros, the same principles apply to AutoText.