Manipulating Combobox in Internet Explorer

I have been automating the IE browser to conduct web scraping for many years across a number of sites.

I have recently come across a combobox that will only work properly after it has been manipulated by a human.

To clarify - if I automate the selection of the dropdown using code, the combobox value changes correctly. Or rather - it APPEARS to. But then the automation clicks the download button and the file that downloads is not the option that was selected in the combobox!

But if I pause the code at this point and I change the dropdown manually in the browser before letting the code continue, the download is the option that was selected.

My question is this:

How do I alter my combobox code so that the browser actions on the combobox are the same as what would have been sent if the combobox had had its dropdown changed manually?

(Or to put it another way - how can the function be written so that its automation will mimic a humans input on a combobox)



Relevant extract below:

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I am unable to provide the website or the HTML code. In any case, I want this function to be generic enough so that I can apply it to any html combobox and it will work.