Creating a drop-down list

By Neil Shorney

Creating a drop-down list: Quality of data in Excel is vital if you are to be able to pull useful results from data sets, and text can be a particular problem if you have repeated values that people choose to spell differently each time they're entered. On the Data tab on the Data Validation button, you can choose what data you will and will not allow.

To create a drop-down list for data entry, first create your list of allowed values in a range of cells, then click Data Validation, choose “List” from the drop-down box and define your source data as the range you've just created. We look at this further in Intermediate Microsoft Excel in the classroom, and in Working with data in Microsoft Excel webinar.