Working with Edit Control Selection Fields

The edit control selection field is the portion of a combo box that displays the currently selected list item. In drop-down combo boxes, which are combo boxes that have the CBS_DROPDOWN style, the selection field is an edit control and can be used to type text not in the list.

You can retrieve or set the contents of the edit control selection field and can determine or set the edit selection. You can also limit the amount of text a user can type in the selection field. When the contents of the selection field change, Windows CE sends notification messages to the parent window or dialog box procedure.

To retrieve the content of the edit control selection field, you send a WM_GETTEXT message to the combo box. To set the contents of the selection field of a drop-down combo box, you send the WM_SETTEXT message to the combo box.