If you are thinking of how to add drop down in Excel, you can learn how to do so in this article. Read along to know all about it.
Excel does make our life and work very simple. It offers various features that make the work easy, quick and apt including text wrapping, data filtering, and more. Several features are on offer; one such brilliant feature is the drop-down in Microsoft Excel.
A drop-down list helps make the whole process of adding data much more accessible. Users can simply text or values from a list of options they make rather than manually typing them in a cell. This way you can control all the data entries.
Table of Contents
How To Add Drop Down In Excel
This is definitely one of the most popular data validation tools.
Now let us learn more about how to create a drop-down list in excel
Step 1: Choose the drop-down list of items
Know that all Drop-down lists control data entry.
The first step before inserting the drop-down list is to know and decide what data entry you need in the drop-down. This is what would make in the list items.
Write the desired drop-down menu options in a list.
Step 2: Go to the ‘Data’ tab
Once you have created a list, go to the ‘Data’ tab and left-click it.
Step 3: Click ‘Data Validation’
Click ‘Data validation’.
(Note – Do not click the little arrow – simply click the top part of the button).
Now, a dialogue box called ‘Data validation’ would appear. Choose the settings for your drop-down list.
Step 4: Allow data validation ‘List’
Click the drop-down list and pick the kind of data validation method you want to use.
Select ‘List’.
Step 5: Select the source list
Now it’s time to connect that list of options that you created with the drop-down menu.
Left-click once in the ‘Source:’ field.
Then go to the location of your list with allowed values from step 1.
Go to the location of your list with allowed values.
Select the cells with your drop-down list items.
And click ‘OK’.
Now your drop-down list is ready for use.
This is how easy it is. Now no wondering how to insert drop-down in excel as you would be able to do it in minutes. Make use of this as much as possible and make your job easy and swift with no errors.
Also Read
How to add row and column in Excel
How to freeze rows and columns in Excel
How to compare two columns in Excel
Error alert
Drop-down lists are used to make our work easy by selecting data entry instead of writing down each value or data manually.
One thing to know is that users can manually add data in the cell which consists of the drop-down list.
In case of invalid data entry, an error alert will show.
In this case, go to the ‘Error alert’ tab after clicking ‘Data validation’.
Make sure there’s a checkmark in the “Show error alert after invalid data is entered”.
Now, add the title and error message and choose an icon if you don’t like the default.
Press ‘OK’.
Now, this error message will pop up every time invalid data is entered into the cell.
Hope all this has helped in adding drop-down in excel and now you would be confident enough to do it yourself.
CONCLUSION
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft that uses formulas and functions to organize numbers and data. Ordinary people can use Microsoft Excel for simple tasks like cell protection and pivot table use, as well as more complex ones like concatenation function.
EasySheet is a tech blog where you can find amazing Excel hacks, tips, and tricks. Our goal is to make Excel accessible to beginners and provide them with solutions to all of their problems using the EasySheet.
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