{"id":3240,"date":"2021-04-20T10:06:49","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T17:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/?p=3240"},"modified":"2021-04-20T10:08:01","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T17:08:01","slug":"how-to-create-a-drop-down-list-in-excel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/?p=3240","title":{"rendered":"How to Create a Drop-Down List in Excel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>You can help people work more efficiently in worksheets by using drop-down lists in cells. Drop-downs allow people to pick an item from a list that you create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\" type=\"1\"><li>In a new worksheet, type the entries you want to appear in your drop-down list. Ideally, you\u2019ll have your list items in an&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/overview-of-excel-tables-7ab0bb7d-3a9e-4b56-a3c9-6c94334e492c\">Excel table<\/a>. If you don\u2019t, then you can quickly convert your list to a table by selecting any cell in the range, and pressing&nbsp;<strong>Ctrl+T<\/strong>.<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/support.content.office.net\/en-us\/media\/4018439e-9c1d-4bbd-8618-4301b21d051f.png\" alt=\"Excel Table used as a Data Validation list source\"><strong>Notes:<\/strong>&nbsp;<ul><li>Why should you put your data in a table? When your data is in a table, then as you&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/add-or-remove-items-from-a-drop-down-list-0b26d3d1-3c4d-41f5-adb4-0addb82e8d2c\">add or remove items from the list<\/a>, any drop-downs you based on that table will automatically update. You don&#8217;t need to do anything else.<\/li><li>Now is a good time to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/sort-data-in-a-range-or-table-62d0b95d-2a90-4610-a6ae-2e545c4a4654\">Sort data in a range or table<\/a>&nbsp;in your drop-down list.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Select the cell in the worksheet where you want the drop-down list.<\/li><li>Go to the&nbsp;<strong>Data<\/strong>&nbsp;tab on the Ribbon, then&nbsp;<strong>Data Validation<\/strong>.<strong>Note:<\/strong>&nbsp;If you can\u2019t click&nbsp;<strong>Data Validation<\/strong>, the worksheet might be protected or shared.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/lock-or-unlock-specific-areas-of-a-protected-worksheet-75481b72-db8a-4267-8c43-042a5f2cd93a\">Unlock specific areas of a protected workbook<\/a>&nbsp;or stop sharing the worksheet, and then try step 3 again.<\/li><li>On the&nbsp;<strong>Settings<\/strong>&nbsp;tab, in the&nbsp;<strong>Allow<\/strong>&nbsp;box, click&nbsp;<strong>List<\/strong>.<\/li><li>Click in the&nbsp;<strong>Source<\/strong>&nbsp;box, then select your list range. We put ours on a sheet called Cities, in range A2:A9. Note that we left out the header row, because we don&#8217;t want that to be a selection option:<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/support.content.office.net\/en-us\/media\/c04c2085-05f2-4d36-b68c-edb9cea91be4.png\" alt=\"Data Validation List options\"><\/li><li>If it\u2019s OK for people to leave the cell empty, check the&nbsp;<strong>Ignore blank<\/strong>&nbsp;box.<\/li><li>Check the&nbsp;<strong>In-cell dropdown<\/strong>&nbsp;box.<\/li><li>Click the&nbsp;<strong>Input Message<\/strong>&nbsp;tab.<ul><li>If you want a message to pop up when the cell is clicked, check the&nbsp;<strong>Show input message when cell is selected<\/strong>&nbsp;box, and type a title and message in the boxes (up to 225 characters). If you don\u2019t want a message to show up, clear the check box.<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/support.content.office.net\/en-us\/media\/35dd530d-334d-405f-a9e7-3b0ac0ccee4a.png\" alt=\"Data Validation Input Message option\"><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Click the&nbsp;<strong>Error Alert<\/strong>&nbsp;tab.<ul><li>If you want a message to pop up when someone enters something that&#8217;s not in your list, check the&nbsp;<strong>Show error alert after invalid data is entered<\/strong>&nbsp;box, pick an option from the&nbsp;<strong>Style<\/strong>&nbsp;box, and type a title and message. If you don\u2019t want a message to show up, clear the check box.<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/support.content.office.net\/en-us\/media\/d650b814-cda5-4470-9478-6d331b48a4ee.png\" alt=\"Data Validation Drop-Down Error Message options\"><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>Not sure which option to pick in the&nbsp;<strong>Style<\/strong>&nbsp;box?<ul><li>To show a message that doesn\u2019t stop people from entering data that isn\u2019t in the drop-down list, click&nbsp;<strong>Information<\/strong>&nbsp;or Warning. Information will show a message with this icon&nbsp;<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/support.content.office.net\/en-us\/media\/7d330039-f98d-42a5-b75b-779ddbac24db.jpg\" alt=\"Message shows Information icon but doesn't stop people from choosing from the drop-down list\">&nbsp;and Warning will show a message with this icon&nbsp;<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/support.content.office.net\/en-us\/media\/5f150f3c-1d3d-4210-b439-7bb2701d0764.jpg\" alt=\"Message shows Warning icon but doesn't stop people from choosing from the drop-down list\">&nbsp;.<\/li><li>To stop people from entering data that isn\u2019t in the drop-down list, click&nbsp;<strong>Stop<\/strong>.<strong>Note:<\/strong>&nbsp;If you don&#8217;t add a title or text, the title defaults to &#8220;Microsoft Excel&#8221; and the message to: &#8220;The value you entered is not valid. A user has restricted values that can be entered into this cell.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Ref: https:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/en-us\/office\/create-a-drop-down-list-7693307a-59ef-400a-b769-c5402dce407b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can help people work more efficiently in worksheets by using drop-down lists in cells. Drop-downs allow people to pick an item from a list that you create. In a new worksheet, type the entries you want to appear in your drop-down list. Ideally, you\u2019ll have your list items in an&nbsp;Excel table. If you don\u2019t, <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/?p=3240\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,18],"tags":[689,688],"class_list":["post-3240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft","category-microsoft-office","tag-drop-down-list-2","tag-drop-down-list"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3248,"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions\/3248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/SUMMALAI.COM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}