Selecting option from selectlist using watin issue

Question

I have a selectlist with the HTML:

<select style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" id="advFindE_fieldListFLDCTL" class="ms-crm-SelectBox" Sort="ascending" defaultSelected="-1">
<optgroup id="fld" label="Fields">
<option title="Case" value="il_caseid" datatype="lookup" namemaxlength="200" nameattr="il_caseidname" lookupstyle="single" lookuptypenames="il_protectionworksheet:10093:Protection Worksheet" lookuptypes="10093">Case</option>
<option title="Created By" value="createdby" datatype="lookup" namemaxlength="320" nameattr="createdbyname" lookupstyle="single" lookuptypenames="systemuser:8:User" lookuptypes="8">Created By</option>
...
<optgroup id="ent" label="Related">
...
</optgroup></select>

And for the life of me I just can't select the "created by" option via watin. I'm not sure if its because of the optgroup elements or what. I've tried almost everyway I can think of such as:

advancedFindWindow.Frame(CRMConstants.contentIFrame).SelectList("advFindE_fieldListFLDCTL").Option("Created By").Select();

or

advancedFindWindow.Frame(CRMConstants.contentIFrame).SelectList("advFindE_fieldListFLDCTL").Option("Created By").Click();

or

    advancedFindWindow.Frame(CRMConstants.contentIFrame).Div("advFindE_fieldListFLDLBL").Focus();
advancedFindWindow.Frame(CRMConstants.contentIFrame).Div("advFindE_fieldListFLDLBL").Click();
Thread.Sleep(250);
advancedFindWindow.Frame(CRMConstants.contentIFrame).SelectList("advFindE_fieldListFLDCTL").Focus();
advancedFindWindow.Frame(CRMConstants.contentIFrame).SelectList("advFindE_fieldListFLDCTL").Click();
SendKeys.SendWait("Created By");
Thread.Sleep(1000);
SendKeys.SendWait("{ENTER}");

However none of these seem to work. The last attempt does select an option but it selects a completely different option for some reason. I'm completely clueless. Any ideas would be helpful.

Answer 1

It will be much easier for you if you select the items by value as those tend to change much less than the text itself. The change is rather simple:

advancedFindWindow.Frame(CRMConstants.contentIFrame).SelectList("advFindE_fieldListFLDCTL").SelectByValue("createdby");

If this is not fixing your problem, please indicate the page you are trying to use and I'll create the code for you to select the correct option.