How to make a OptionMenu maintain the same width?

Question

I have a snippet which creates an OptionMenu widget.

...
options = ('White', 'Grey', 'Black', 'Red', 'Orange', 
           'Yellow', 'Green', 'Blue', 'Cyan', 'Purple')
var = StringVar()
optionmenu = OptionMenu(par, var, *options)
optionmenu.grid(column=column, row=row)
...

One problem I've encountered is every time a new option is selected, the width of the widget changes. I believe this is due to the text within the widget changing widths. How do I make the widget hold a consistent width?

score 35 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 02 '17 at 09:25

35

To the best of my knowledge, you can use optionmenu.config(width=<YOUR_WIDTH>) as follows:

...
optionmenu = OptionMenu(par, var, *options)
optionmenu.config(width=<YOUR_WIDTH>)
optionmenu.grid(column=column, row=row)
...

edited Sep 02 '17 at 09:25

nbro

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answered Apr 12 '11 at 13:58

Symon

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score 17 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 12 '11 at 11:03

17

When you use the grid command to place the widget in its parent, have the widget fill its cell (try sticky="ew")

answered Apr 12 '11 at 11:03

Bryan Oakley

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This does not work for me. I am using a dropdown in a frame. Yet it expands it for long options in the dropdown. – technazi Oct 31 '18 at 20:06
1

An alternate could be to find the maximum width of all widgets in that column and then set the default of the variable within the option menu to be " "*(max_width/font_size_of_option_widget). The size of the widget can be obtained using widget.update() and then widget.winfo_width() – Sharpfawkes Sep 11 '19 at 06:40

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 01 '17 at 23:30

3

optionmenu.configure(width=<YOUR_WIDTH_HERE>)

edited Sep 01 '17 at 23:30

nbro

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answered Jul 11 '13 at 16:13

user2155059

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 13 '22 at 02:20

0

I'm in the exact same boat as the OP was 12 years ago - placing dropdowns in a frame, only to discover that no solution exists for setting them to expand horizontally and fill that frame. As a result they're always resizing (and re-centering) any time a different-length option is selected. sticky='' has no effect whatsoever. width='' works, but now you're setting a fixed width that is only optimized for one resolution.

Of course the terrible solution is to use a monospace font and add spaces to the end of all the options in the dropdown. I just don't understand how there can be no real solution for this. These dropdowns look absolutely atrocious as a result.

answered Nov 13 '22 at 02:20

Nathan

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i've posted an answer to this, in case you're looking for a better solution. – toppk Aug 15 '23 at 02:38
Thanks, I'll take a look. Do you happen to have a link? – Nathan Aug 24 '23 at 15:39
it's just below your response here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/76903139/4744864 – toppk Aug 24 '23 at 19:36

toppk · Answer 5 · 2023-08-15T07:37:25.183

This can be done with

frame.columnconfigure(1, minsize=120)
optmenu = ttk.OptionMenu(frame,...)
optmenu.grid(row=1, column=1, sticky=tk.EW)

Not optimal as you have to guess the pixel width of the colume, but it works.

Here are some links, I found to be useful in coming up with this answer.

https://www.pythontutorial.net/tkinter/tkinter-grid/

Set minimum width of column in grid

https://tkdocs.com/tutorial/grid.html

How to make a OptionMenu maintain the same width?

5 Answers5

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