Hello Michael,

I assume you are using UltraDropDown inside a Grid column. In that case, you can set the containing columns ButtonDisplayStyle to Always in order to make the UltraGrid always display the dropdown arrow button. For example, you can do something like this:
UltraGridColumn column = this.ultraGrid1.DisplayLayout.Bands[1].Columns["Column1"];
column.ButtonDisplayStyle = Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.ButtonDisplayStyle.Always;

Please let me know if I may be of further assistance.

Sincerely,
Sahaja Kokkalagadda
Associate Software Developer