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Currently we have a WPF application being built in C# using Visual Studio 2010. There is a combo box that has check-boxes in it, but we would like there to be a select/deselect all option. This would be essentially the same as what you see in the auto-filter drop-downs in MS Excel 2007/2010, where you can select all checkboxes or deselect all checkboxes. The combo box is populated from a field in a SQL Compact Database, whose records depend on the value selected in another combo box (so the other combo box acts as a filter for which values you would see in this drop-down).

This feature has been on our plate for months, but the technical team keeps pushing back for the next release because they say it's too difficult to implement. I'm the business analyst on the application, not the actual programmer, but I figured I would come here to elicit some help.

Is this really something that is difficult to achieve (as in, it would take at least a week to implement)? What would be the way to go about achieving this?

Ryan
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  • Implementing the (de)select all on the control is a few minutes to a few hours work, depending. If the existing control already allows for multiple items to be checked, then all the logic should already be in place for dealing with the batch process. One week to implement seems a bit far fetched based on what you've described. Then again, there may be quite a bit more going on technically that the team may feel is a bottleneck. I'd ask them to explain the impediments that lead the team to estimate this task at 1+ weeks. – Metro Smurf Jun 02 '12 at 00:22
  • The 1 week time period is just something I threw out there - they haven't actually given me a time estimate, but it's been on the list of features for over 6 months now, and each time the developers attempt it, it's deemed too difficult and pushed aside (they work on it for a bit, then move onto one of the more important features). The control is already multi-select. I'll present the solution given in the answer to them and see if that is able to do the trick, or if there is some other problem preventing this from being implemented. – Ryan Jun 02 '12 at 00:59

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Here's a solution from someone on MSDN. I created a new WPF project to try it out... it works. You can check individual checkboxes. If you check or uncheck the Select All option, all other checkboxes are checked or unchecked accordingly. Took about 5 minutes to create and test.

enter image description here

Of course, it may be that your team has overridden the functionality of the control in some way or they'll hit some other limitation and not be able to implement this, but the combobox should support it.

Grant Winney
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