Hiding Selected Items in MultiSelect Component

Updated on Dec 10, 2025

Environment

Product	MultiSelect for Progress® Kendo UI®
Version	2025.2.520

Description

I want to hide the selected items from the dropdown list in the MultiSelect component. Currently, the selected items are highlighted, but I need them to be excluded from the list instead.

This knowledge base article also answers the following questions:

• How to filter out selected items in Kendo UI MultiSelect?
• How to remove selected items dynamically in MultiSelect dropdown?
• How to use the open event to filter items in MultiSelect?

Solution

To hide selected items from the dropdown list in the MultiSelect component, use the open event to dynamically filter the dropdown list each time it is shown. The following code demonstrates this approach:

javascript

open: function(e) {
    var multiselect = e.sender;
    var selectedValues = multiselect.value();
    var dataSource = multiselect.dataSource;

    // Show all items first
    dataSource.filter(null);

    // Then filter out selected items
    dataSource.filter({
        logic: "and",
        filters: selectedValues.map(function(value) {
            return {
                field: "value",
                operator: "neq",
                value: value
            };
        })
    });
}

Explanation

1. Attach the open event to the MultiSelect component.
2. Retrieve the selected values using the value() method.
3. Reset the filter by setting it to null to ensure all items are initially visible.
4. Apply a filter to exclude the selected items. This is achieved using the filter method with a condition that removes items matching the selected values.

Example

A full demonstration can be found in the following Dojo example.

<select id="multiSelect" multiple="multiple">
</select>
<script>
$("#multiSelect").kendoMultiSelect({
    dataTextField: "text",
    dataValueField: "value",
    dataSource: [
        { text: "Item 1", value: 1 },
        { text: "Item 2", value: 2 },
        { text: "Item 3", value: 3 },
        { text: "Item 4", value: 4 }
    ],
    value: [2], // Preselected item
    open: function(e) {
        var multiselect = e.sender;
        var selectedValues = multiselect.value();
        var dataSource = multiselect.dataSource;

        // Show all items first
        dataSource.filter(null);

        // Then filter out selected items
        dataSource.filter({
            logic: "and",
            filters: selectedValues.map(function(value) {
                return {
                    field: "value",
                    operator: "neq",
                    value: value
                };
            })
        });
    }
});
</script>

See Also

• MultiSelect Overview Documentation
• Open Event API Reference
• Filtering in Kendo UI DataSource