Combo box or Dropdown? Who is the winner?

Introduction

Two very commonly used Power Apps control to present a list of options to users are combo boxes and dropdowns.

1. Combo box: It is a control that allows users to make selections from provided choices. Supports search and multiple selections (Source: Microsoft Docs)
2. Dropdown: It is a list that shows only the first item unless the user opens it (Source: Microsoft Docs)

Although the definitions may not sound similar, they are very identical in their behavior and usage. That being said, they do have differences which is what makes this battle of controls very interesting!

Tip - Combo box ALWAYS!

Why? Because of the following advantages:

1. It allows users to search for an item to select
2. Users can select one or more items
3. It allows for a blank default value (although dropdowns now have a property that allows blank defaults, it has to be set to true)
4. It supports multiple layouts (a single data value, two values, or a picture and two values which is ideal for a people picker)

Because of these points, a combo box can be configured to behave like a dropdown but it doesn't work the other way round. So using a combo box allows for flexibility in case the use case changes in the future.

Stay tuned for the remaining 23 tips!

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