How to create a dropdown list in Excel?

this drop-down lists It is one of the most frequently used features in Excel. They make it possible to impose a range of acceptable values ​​on a cell. Therefore, unlike cells in free entry, it is a list of options with predetermined data.

This feature can be useful, for example, when you need to create a document to be filled out by other users. This allows you to limit certain cells to certain options.

Excel: how to create dropdown list?

Creating a drop-down list in Excel is done in one or two steps, depending on the complexity of the data to display. The simplest is to populate the list items directly without going through a data source.

• Select the cell where you want to create the drop-down list.
• open tab Data in the Excel menu. in the section data toolschoose Data validation.

• Stay tabbed in the small window that appears Options then choose List at line level To let.
• in the area Sourceenter items from the drop-down list separated by semicolon (;) then confirm.

• You have just created a drop-down list.

This is the easiest way to create a drop-down list in Excel. However, sometimes the data to be displayed is already in a set of cells or a table in the same document. In this case, these cells should be used as the data source. This method is more suitable for long lists. Even more so if they need to be scalable.

Create dropdown list in Excel using data source

With the first method, we learned how to directly enter dropdown list items in the target cell in Excel. In the second method, this time in two steps, First, you need to create a data source.. This is a range of cells that contain items to display in the drop-down list.

The second step is to fetch the items from the source range and display them in the drop-down list. The source can be on the current worksheet or on another sheet of the same Excel document.

Step 1: Create the data source

The resource acts as a database containing the items in the drop-down list. These elements must be completed in the same column, line by line. Let’s go back to our city list example. You must enter them one after the other as in the screenshot below.

Note that it’s quite possible for the data source to be on the same page as the source that should host the drop-down list. However, for practical reasons, we recommend creating the resource on another page. This provides more clarity.

Step 2: Create the drop-down list

This process is practically the same as described in the first part of this tutorial. The steps vary slightly from point 4.

1. Select the cell where you want to create the drop-down list.
2. go to tab Data from the Excel menu. in the section data toolschoose Data validation. A small window appears.
3. on the tab Options select from the window in question List at line level To let.
4. in the area Source, click the arrow on the right then select the range containing the data to display in the list. then press Come in Then OK.

Note that in our example, the source is in the range of cells G4 to G8 on another sheet. data source. We could have given this page a different name. For example “Source cities”, “reference cities” etc.

Now you know how to create a drop-down list in Excel. The simplest method is to enter the list items directly at the data validation level. But to have more modularity and a more flexible list, it is better to create a separate column with different items to display.