title: How to treat a combobox as a link to another form?
body: <p>I've been struggling with trying to modify a combobox to treat the currently selected item as a link to another form.</p>
  
  <p>The basic workflow is simple; I want the text in a combobox to function like a link when not selecting a new item from the list.  This link will open a new form, and find the relevant record.  ie. click on the customer name to open the Customer form and show their info.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is specific to the combobox; the same functionality works just fine for a textbox.  Put the code in the Click event, form opens, goes to the right record, easy peasy.  I should be able to just do the same thing with a combobox, right?</p>
  
  <p>Nope.  The Click event on the Combobox <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vba/access-vba/articles/combobox-click-event-access?f=255&amp;MSPPError=-2147217396" rel="nofollow noreferrer">only fires when selecting a new item from the list</a>.  It says, <code>Clicks a control with the left mouse button. Clicking a control with the right or middle mouse button does not trigger this event.</code>, but it doesn't do anything when clicking.</p>
  
  <p>Alright.  Let's set it as a hyperlink.  That should fire the Click event!  Nope.  It first tries to follow the, "link", and since the value is an internal primary key, it doesn't know what to do with it.  So it errors, and goes nowhere.</p>
  
  <p>Now my attempts get more esoteric.  Let's hide a rectangle behind the combobox, and put the code in it's Click event!  Nope.  Doesn't flow through to the object behind.  Let's just put it on top of the dropdown!  Nope.  Still doesn't fire the rectangle's Click event.</p>
  
  <p>Okay, get rid of the rectangle.  Let's try putting the code in the MouseUp event of the Combobox.  Bingo.  Clicking the text works now.  But...now it does it every time I click on it.  I don't want it opening the form when I'm trying to select another customer.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried <a href="http://access.mvps.org/access/api/api0052.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">detecting when the dropdown is expanded</a>, and not following the link when it returns true.  That...sort of works.  It won't close the expanded dropdown now, and you can't debug it, because the detection code is low level and showing the debug screen makes it return false (because the dropdown isn't open anymore).</p>
  
  <p>I've tried setting a static variable to only follow the link when not selecting a new item.  That's super inconsistent, as there's no good way to figure out what state the combobox is in.</p>
  
  <p>Turning text into a clickable link shouldn't be this hard.  How can I make the currently selected item in a combobox a link, while not making everything else in the combobox a link at the same time?  Am I missing an event or something?</p>