Loading all options for child while retaining teh saved value

I have a 2 drop downs, "Car Make" and "Model" on an update page for "Owners". The dependent drop down is working fine... selecting Car Make populates Car Model, and the values are saved to the database.

When returning to that update page, Car Make works normally. I can select from all of the Car Makes, but the one I saved is the default. Since Model is dependent on Car Make, it doesn't load anything, so I setup the default value of Model from the recordset.

The problem is, if I selected Nissan > Maxima (for istance), when I return to the page, I can select another Make, but not another Model unless I change the Make to something else and then change it back again, in essence, retriggering the parent child script. The model, Maxima is in the dropdown all alone with no other option.

Is there a way to load all of the option for the Model field while retaining the saved value?

It will not work to populate these lists from the records that hold the selected values. As you noted you will have only a single record show in the list. The trick is to get the lists to load just like when the user made the selections. You will need to do this by calling the same function with the same values as the onChange event for your main list.

One way you could do this would be by checking the selected index, if it is anything other than 0 then a selection has been made and the code in the onChange for that select list should be executed. Executing this code with the same values should cause the next select list to be properly filtered and populated. After you execute that code you may need to check the recordset to set the selected value properly.

This is a slightly custom approach to get the dynamic dropdowns to work in this situation but if it is implemented like this it should give you the desired result. Let us know if you have any further questions on any part of this.