How to Make a Dropdown List Cell in Excel to Reduce Content – Complete Guide

Drop-down lists in Excel are used with the purpose of reducing errors when entering information in a cell or range of cells in Excel, just by grouping the total data in any part of the spreadsheet.

Which Excel documents benefit the most from putting cells with dropdown lists?

The drop-down formula alternative in Excel is extremely useful for documents to be completed using indicators With the aim of reducing writing errors, it allows more precise percentages to be calculated and data filtering work easier. For example, when completing a list of invoices, you can place indicators.

Group data in common

To avoid problems in the selection and grouping of data. In cases like when in a column options are restricted to an amount of data constant and repetitive, we recommend making drop-down lists.

What methods are there to return a cell in drop down list in Excel?

There is a wide variety of techniques for making drop-down lists since, automate responses through constant indicators, among these methods we have the following:

With the command ‘data validation’

• Copy each category in a different cell, as many as you want insert into your dropdown list. It should be noted that the data must be copied without formatting and located somewhere in the spreadsheet.
• Go to the cell you want to transform into a drop-down cell, go to the “Data” tab and select the “Data validation” option.
• A window “Validation of data” will be displayed, select the option allow in configuration, choose list and in the source category select the total list of data that you are going to place in your drop-down list.
• After this configuration, an inverse triangle will appear that when clicking indicates that you can select a data from the list. If you want to copy this same formula in subsequent cells, you can drag it to the back of the cell.

Automatically generated with context menu

Excel also handles a menu called a context menu or a pop-up menu that appears when we press right click on any of the cells, this basically consists of displaying a series of common menu options.

In the case of drop-down lists, you can do them without having to execute so many formulas, simply by writing the categories to include in the first cells of the response column. Later, in order not to write the same thing repeatedly in the lower cells of the column, we recommend you press the right click, select “Choose from the drop-down list” and select the category of your preference.

Created by form control

If what you want is to give a more attractive appearance to your drop-down list, you can do the following: Enter the tab called Excel document programmer, select the insert option, choose a form control, position yourself on a cell, right click on the control, choose control format and define the range of categories you want to add to your drop-down list.

A conditional dropdown

You can make conditional drop-down lists in Excel, that is, it allows you to select one category that will determine a series of specific subcategories.

To put it into practice you must: 1. Write the categories and subcategories of the double entry table on a sheet or part of the Excel document. 2. Make a drop-down list of the categories with the command “data viewer”. 3. Denominate the range of subcategories with the name of the category that encompasses it.

Next, 4. In a separate cell, use the SI conditional to relate the subcategories to the categories, for example with the formula = SI (C4 = ”category1”; rangename; SI (C4 = ”category2”; rangename2;…)., close all parentheses and hit Enter. 5. Open the option “data viewer” in the list of subcategories, copy and paste the format made previously in the “source” option.

How do I add a new item to the dropdown cell in Excel?

If what you want is to automatically add a new data or category to your drop-down list, you must follow the following steps: Locate yourself in the list of categories previously created, select the cells with the total of the categories

Go to the home tab in Excel by selecting the option “Format as table” without choosing “the table has headers”, add the data you want in the cells below from the table and you will see the new data reflected in the cell configured as a drop-down list.