Hi Bragadiru,

You could draw the items in the ListBox/ComboBox by yourself to mimic the
disabled items. You could handle the DrawItem event of ListBox/ComboBox or
derive a new class from ListBox/ComboBox and override the OnDrawItem
method.

I recommend you to adopt the second option, so that you could reuse the new
class wherever you want and needn't handle the DrawItem event for each
ListBox/ComboBox control instance.

Below is the samples of deriving two new classes from ListBox and ComboBox.
They all have a list to contain the indexes of the disabled items. We draw
those disabled items in gray.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;

class ListBoxEx:ListBox
   {
       public List<int> DisabledItems = new List<int>();

       public ListBoxEx()
       {
          // Only if the DrawMode property is set to OwnerDrawFixed or
OwnerDrawVariable, we can draw items by ourselves
           this.DrawMode = DrawMode.OwnerDrawFixed;
       }

       protected override void OnDrawItem(DrawItemEventArgs e)
       {
           // use this statement to avoid the design-time error when the
instance of this class is dragged&dropped onto a form
           if (!this.DesignMode)
           {
               e.DrawBackground();

               Brush myBrush = Brushes.Black;                
               if (this.DisabledItems.Contains(e.Index))
               {
                   myBrush = Brushes.Gray;
               }                

               // Draw the current item text based on the current Font and
the custom brush settings.
               e.Graphics.DrawString(this.Items[e.Index].ToString(),
e.Font, myBrush, e.Bounds, StringFormat.GenericDefault);
               // If the ListBox has focus, draw a focus rectangle around
the selected item.
               e.DrawFocusRectangle();
               base.OnDrawItem(e);
           }      

       }
     
   }

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Drawing;

class ComboBoxEx:ComboBox
   {
       public ComboBoxEx()
       {
           this.DrawMode = DrawMode.OwnerDrawFixed;
       }

       public List<int> DisabledItems = new List<int>();

       protected override void OnDrawItem(DrawItemEventArgs e)
       {
           e.DrawBackground();
           Brush mybrush = Brushes.Black;
           if (this.DisabledItems.Contains(e.Index))
           {
               mybrush = Brushes.Gray;
           }
           e.Graphics.DrawString(this.Items[e.Index].ToString(),e.Font,
mybrush, e.Bounds);
           e.DrawFocusRectangle();

           base.OnDrawItem(e);
       }
   }

Set up a WinForms application and add two classes files into it. Copy the
above code into the two classes files and build the project. You will see
ListBoxEx and ComboBoxEx appear in the Toolbox. Drag&drop them onto the
form, add several items into them and in the form's Load event handler, add
the following code:

this.listBoxEx1.DisabledItems.Add(0);
this.listBoxEx1.DisabledItems.Add(2);

this.comboBoxEx1.DisabledItems.Add(1);
this.comboBoxEx1.DisabledItems.Add(3);

Run the program and you will see the first and third items in the
ListBoxEx1 are in gray and the second and fourth items in the comboBoxEx1
are in gray.

Hope this helps.
If you have anything unclear, please feel free to let me know.

Sincerely,
Linda Liu
Microsoft Online Community Support

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Hi Bragadiru,

How about the problem now?

If you have anything unclear, please feel free to let me know.

Thank you for using our MSDN Managed Newsgroup Support Service!

Sincerely,
Linda Liu
Microsoft Online Community Support

Hello,
I don't know if Bragadiru has any problem, but i would, since i have the same issue, as you can still select the grayed item. Anything about that ?

Thanks