There are two ways. 1. Have a hidden field in the page and set the value of that field as $("#hiddendfield").val($("#ddlProjectsID option:selected").text()); You need to this on OnChange event of the dropdown. after that call the form submit method. it will be better if you use $.ajax of the jquery for submission. Then in by using formcollection you can get the value of that hidden field in the controller. 2. have the list again in the controller and fire a query in that list against the id selected. now you have the selected item and you can get the display text

For it to work, the user will have to be logged onto the same domain as the web server is on. Windows Authentication means that the user has already authenticated on their machine and now is trying to access a network resource (your IIS site). If it is still not working check your web.config and share your authentication section. You may be denying certain users. There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.