Here’s a simple but effective trick to ensure that the column of a ListView control is wide enough to display the entire string you’re assigning to the column title or to an element. Just drop a Label on the form, set its Autosize property to True and Visible property to False. Also, ensure that the Label control has a Font property that matches the one used for the ListView.

Then, when you want to ensure that a string will be displayed correctly in the ListView, just assign it to the Label control first, and then compare the Label’s Width property with the width of the ListView column:

    Dim text As String    text = "A very long string added to the ListView"    ' Add a couple of spaces for good measure.    Label1.Caption = text & "  "    ' Compare current column width with Label's width         If ListView1.ColumnHeaders(1).Width < Label1.Width Then        ' make the column wider if necessary        ListView1.ColumnHeaders(1).Width = Label1.Width    End If        ListView1.ListItems.Add , , text