Excel Pick from Drop Down List

Excel Pick from Drop Down List Examples and Templates

Creating a drop down list in Excel is fairly easy. As hard as some persons have found Excel to be. You still have certain tasks that a first time beginner can do. A huge benefit of using drop down list in Excel is that it makes your data more engaging. Just imagine looking at 100’s of lines of data.

It would be great one or even two times to at least choose a yes or no option or choose something from a list. The drop down list also helps to add a new dimension to your data. This will help you to create more sophisticated spreadsheets with new functionalities.

You can see a tutorial below on how to create a drop down list in Excel.

Drop down list tutorial in Excel

Step 1

Open a new excel spreadsheet, enter in the data that you want to see in your drop list. Make certain that they are entered properly and organized in a single row or single column and take out any blank cells.

Step 2

You are now going to select all your data, right click next choose define name. A name box is supposed to appear and in it you are going name your entries. Do not include any spaces in your name.

The reason for this is because it is necessary for you to name it when it’s time to link it to your drop down list.

Step 3

Next you are going choose the cell where you want to the drop down list to be. Go on data tab then click on data validation. You are going to see a popup box, on the popup box click on the settings tab. Next click list which Is going to be in the allow box.

Step 4

You are going to firstly type the = sign then put in the name you gave your entries which was done above in the source box below the allow box. Example =entriesname.

After that check off the ‘in cell dropdown’ option. If you are going to allow persons to leave an empty cell, you can check off the ‘ignore blank’ box.

Step 5

Next click on the input message tab. If you are going to allow users to see a pop up message when they clicked on a cell.

You can do this by clicking on the show input message box check box, then you can type text into the title and the message box. If you are not allowing users to choose to see a message you can clear the check box.

Step 6

You are going to then go on the error alert tab. Check off the show error alert check box. Select an option from the style drop down list. Then type in the title and message.

And again if you don’t want to see a message you can clear off the check box. Keep in mind that if you somehow don’t insert a title or text in the areas shown above. Microsoft will set the title and message to default.

The tutorial show above is very doable and if you follow everything carefully you will see how quickly it is to create a drop down list in Excel.