I haven't done much work with combo box controls, but I had a similar situation with a list control where i needed to store extra data besides what is displayed. I think you can use the CComboBoxEx object which use the COMBOEXITEM structure instead of LVITEM. You can store a pointer to a filter string (or a pointer to a structure if you need to store more) typedef struct { TCHAR szFilter[256]; //eg "*.* } FILTERDATA, *PFILTERDATA; Then just add the structure when adding your items, for list control: PFILTERDATA pData = new FILTERDATA; strcpy(pData->szFilter, szMyFilter); COMBOEXITEM item; memset(&item, 0, sizeof(item)); item.mask = CBEIF_LPARAm | CBEIF_TEXT; item.lparam = (LPARAM) pData; item.iItem = -1; item.pszText = new TCHAR[sizeof(szMyDisplay)]; item.cchText = sizeof(szMyDisplay); nItem = m_cFilters.InsertItem(0, &item); Then when your user selects something do: COMBOEXITEM cbi; ZeroMemory(&cbi, sizeof(COMBOEXITEM)); cbi.iItem = hitTest.iItem; cbi.mask = CBEIF_PARAM; m_cFilters.GetItem(&cbi); PFILTERDATA pTemp = cbi.lParam; CString strTemp; strTemp.Format("Filter is %s", pTemp->szFilter); or maybe there's an easier way :) btw don't forget to delete the lparam pointer. probably best to subclass the entire control so you can delete the memory in teh destructor
