Binding to a dictionary can be tricky.

It sounds simple but it never works on the first try. Usually when you first run you application you see that instead of the beautiful template you created for the items, you get something that looks like a pair of key and value. your binding works fine, you just did not think about what are you binding to. every item in a dictionary is a pair (Key,Value) and that is exactly what you get as the binded item. You have two ways of handle this, You can either change the markup of the Binding expression to include the reference to the Value :

<ComboBox.ItemTemplate>
                <DataTemplate>
                    <StackPanel Orientation=”Horizontal”>
                        <TextBlock Text=”{Binding Value.Text}”></TextBlock>
                        <TextBlock> = </TextBlock>
                        <TextBlock Text=”{Binding Value.Value}”></TextBlock>
                    </StackPanel>
                </DataTemplate>
            </ComboBox.ItemTemplate>

or you can change the binding expression of the control to refer to the Values property of the dictionary:

<ComboBox Height=”23″ Margin=”0,14,9,0″ Name=”comboBox1″
                  VerticalAlignment=”Top” SelectedValuePath=”Key”
                  ItemsSource=”{Binding Items.Values}”
                  HorizontalAlignment=”Right” Width=”120″>

Now you have your control binded to a Dictionary, Hurray!

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Enjoy

Amit.