as i understod from your message is that you want your listbox list to be like this when the ser drop down the list :-
meat milk
google hotmail
..... ....

if its so. you have to concatenate the columns like this

ListBox1.AddItem "haha"& " " & " haha2"

try it i hope this is what you want.

Setting The Listbox to have multiple columns will not work the way you expect it to. Having a Mult-Column listbox will only show both columns, when the length of the first column is full. To illustrate this, start a new project, and drop a listbox on it. Change it's columns to 3, and add this code to form_load:
As you can see (depending on how "tall" you made the listbox) the first column fills up first, then the second, and third.... so on. In order to do what you want, it will take a bit of crafty programming, using the API. Check this site for further details: http://www.thescarms.com/vbasic/listbox.asp

oh. i tried the loop you posted. it really did populate in multiple columns. more than 3 actually since my box is rather short.
sigh. last time i did in VBA the data source based on query/table, getting it into multiple columns is straightforward. never knew in VB6, with data source being values, is an entirely different story.

anyway thanks for the suggestions

Try MSFlexiGrid instead, its alot better.

here is the answer - well my technique anyway.

myListBox.ColumnCount = 2