The solution in VB is to use a datagrid. There is the MSFlex grid, and one
other that is included is the dbgrid. These controls will give you more than
one column.

None of them approach the simplicity of the listbox....and that needed
feature of listing one column..but storing the id....

I not greatly familiar with all the VB controls..and I hope some does chime
in here as mention what control does give more than one column..but store a
id. I was under the impression that there is a combo box that does allow two
collums...but I can't find it right now...

You have the standard combo box in VB..and you fill it using additem

You also have the DBCombo box. This one does allow you to display a column
from a table of your choosing...and also allows the storing a different
field.

In ms-access, the above would be a combo with two columns, and the first
field would have a "length" of zero.

Hence, you *can* have a combo box in VB that displays one field (such as
description), but actually stores the id field.

However,...you can't display more than one column with the DBCombo.

--
Larry Linson      http://www.ntpcug.org -- N Tex. PC User
Group
  http://members.tripod.com/ntaccess -- Access SIG
  http://members.tripod.com/accdevel -- Access Samples
  http://members.tripod.com/appdevissues -- Presentations

Thanks very much for your comments.

Our computing department at my university had insited a month ago that
an important Oracle Back-end project be developed using VB.  While I am
fairly good with Access and ODBC connections to Oracle, VB is brand new
territory for me.  The computing department representative insited that
since I knew VBA in Access very well, VB would be a snap.

Far from it <imagine an irritated grimace here!>

It really is using all the data control stuff is where the learning curve
lies. The forms and controls in VB are gearned towards general applction
development...and using VB for database stuff means that more work is
required

If there aren't some specific reasons, then they increased
your burden immensely (particularly since you already are
comfortable with Access - ODBC - Oracle). But, if they are
the ones who call the shots, then there's little to do but
learn VB -- that's not the worst thing in the world, anyway.
And, hey, if you are being paid by the hour, take heart,
you're going to be paid for at least twice as many hours!

Most seem to find that binding data with data controls
doesn't work nearly as well in VB as binding forms and
controls in Access, so you'll see much more database work in
VB based on unbound forms. But, you have a "leg up" over
many VB folk, in that you already understand database -- for
example, you know to use a query/SQL with a WHERE clause to
just get the exact record you need, instead of opening a
whole table and doing a FindFirst. A lot of VB people
without database experience have _that_ as a steep learning
curve.