Question 1:
I would suggest, rather than relying on the click on the component, implementing code that "finds" what you want to click on it and return the object... THEN click on it. We have a similar situation. We have a web table that has a list of items. Each time we run the test, the list potentially changes so we can't always rely on the item we want to always be on the same row. So, we created code that does a for loop through the table, checking a particular column. Each time through the loop it checks the value in that column. If it finds the item we're looking for, the function returns the desired row which we store in a variable and then use to actually click on the desired cell.
Question 2:
The quickest and easiest way to do this is to increase the Auto-Wait Timeout in Tools -> Current Project Properties -> Playback.
