to put it 'mildly', i agree w/ evalesthy in " ... that number of records in a combo box would be unwieldly ... ".
A ComboBox is part of a USER INTERFACE, loosly translated to the thinggyyy which humans would be expected to actively use / manipulate / seletc items from and add / or add elements to. The 'average bear' (in my opinion) just isn't going to cope with the whole stack of hay lookng for your particular needly, so the concept of using the combobox as the universe of selection seems to be an un-likely vehicle to use.
Without a lot of additional information, I would not care to suggest a specific 'soloution' -or even an approach. The first thought from my perspective would be to review the design requirements and from there, the actual desing and down to the implementation details to arrive at a USER friendly aplication. THAT usually doesn't get a positive response in these fora, so perhaps that is enough for my contribution.
MichaelRed
m.red@att.net
Searching for employment in all the wrong places