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Pop-up menu in Excel?

Every now and then I get GDL and Excel mixed up. I can't do a pop-up with a list of values for a field, nor anything resembling that in Excel, right?

How would you go in Excel if you wanted to give the user a list of values from which to choose from, instead of typing the value? Only way I know is a button with a macro for each value but that would be too many buttons, and also ugly, so hopefully I am missing something.
4 REPLIES 4
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Ignacio wrote:
Every now and then I get GDL and Excel mixed up. I can't do a pop-up with a list of values for a field, nor anything resembling that in Excel, right?

How would you go in Excel if you wanted to give the user a list of values from which to choose from, instead of typing the value? Only way I know is a button with a macro for each value but that would be too many buttons, and also ugly, so hopefully I am missing something.
Ignacio,
I'm far from an expert with Excel but it just so happens I came across this problem a few days ago.
We had an Excel workbook with a dropdown list of values that we needed to amend.

I think what you need is to go to the DATA menu then VALIDATION.
In the SETTINGS tab choose a list and then add your values separated by commas to the SOURCE box.

I hope thisa is what you are after.

Barry.
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Excellent Barry,

Thank you for this tip. Its worth an Excel Armchair.
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That is so cool! Thanks Barry.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Barry wrote:
I think what you need is to go to the DATA menu then VALIDATION. In the SETTINGS tab choose a list and then add your values separated by commas to the SOURCE box.
Or, do a range (=A1:A25). BTW, you can also pull the options from a different worksheet. Even a different workbook altogether. We've done that one one of our workbooks, but can't remember exactly how it went. You can play around with the help screens if you're interested in this, but the basics for it are as follows.

1. enter all the options you want to have available, each in a separate cell (in column or row only), select all cells, and in the upper left-hand corner (where you see the cell address) give them a 1-word reference name (i.e.: WORK_DATA). If you want the data read from a different file, this can also be done (see Excel help)

2. Go back and via Data - Validation, somehow (insert magic formula) reference that redefinable range of cells. It's working for us, but like I said, I can't remember exactly how I did it.