using dropdown controls for an edit screen

[Occadiect]

I'm building a data edit screen with several dropdown controls. My problem is setting the selected value of the dropdown to match the existing field it is tied to. My method has been to fill the dropdown with the possible values (easy enough):<BR> dropControl.Items.Insert(0, New ListItem("Value1")<BR> dropControl.Items.Insert(0, New ListItem("Value2")<BR>...<BR>I use a DataReader to retrieve the record I wish to edit:<BR> myDataReader = ("SELECT dataField FROM table WHERE ID=" & id)<BR>...<BR>Then I do a loop of the dropdown items to see if the value matches any of those items:<BR> Dim cnt as integer<BR> for cnt = 0 To dropControl.items.count-1<BR> if dropControl.items(cnt).value=http://aspmessageboard.com/archive/index.php/myDataReader(dataFiel d) then<BR> dropControl.SelectedIndex=cnt<BR> end if<BR> next<BR>...<BR>This all works, but I can't help feeling there must be a better way. Am I missing an easy function in here? I have not been able to find a good source for building an edit screen (although building an initial insert routine are plentiful). Would someone consider writing an article on data editing using dropdown controls - and another edit control problem I had to deal with - having textbox representing date fields that may be left null, then saving that value to a database. (I'll show that piece of code magic if anyone is interested)<BR><BR>Any help anyone?dropControl.Items.FindByValue(myDataReader("dataField").ToString()).Selected="true"<BR><BR>(a plug to dotnetjunkies.com!)