Speed up those forms which use Comboboxes

GeneBuchite · July 17th, 2010, 08:18 AM

Have you ever noticed how slowly a form loads when you place a combo box on it with the autoCompleteMode set to "SuggestAppend" and the AutoCompleteSource set to list? well one way I found to shorten this time was to set the autoCompleteMode And the AutoCompleteSource Parameters in the "Form_Activated " Sub Like this....

Code:

    Private Sub HelloUser_Activated(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Activated
        ComboBox1.AutoCompleteMode = AutoCompleteMode.SuggestAppend
        ComboBox1.AutoCompleteSource = AutoCompleteSource.ListItems

    End Sub

Leave both AutoComplete... Parameters Set to none in the desigh environment
That will speed up about 2 Seconds/Combobox.
but the real Speed up That I found comes from hiding the combobox in the design environment, then showing it in the Activated SUB.

After placing the combobox on the form Select "Visible" from the Properties Window. Set Visible to "False"

Then Add

Code:

        ComboBox1.Visible = True

In a button that the user will use before they need the combobox...
you cannot simply place it in the Activated Sub because it will not speed anything up. the user must make it visible by clicking a button.

This sped up the form loading process by about 2.3 SEC/Combobox!

Hope this helps someone as this solutin only cost me about 8 hours.