How to Create a Drop-Down List in Excel
Welcome to Barkateraza!
My name’s Zahi and in this short tutorial, I’ll show you how to easily create a drop-down list in Excel.
Well, let’s have a look!
We’ll use this short questionnaire to see how simple it is to create a drop-down menu
and you’ll be able to use these steps to create a list with any data you need.
First, we’ll have a look at how to create a longer drop-down list with more options.
What we can use for drop-down items here are the months of the year.
They’ll become our options for the answer to the first question.
Then we’ll try something a little bit different.
I’ll show you a way how to create a short drop-down list with only two items – ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.
Those will be possible answers to our second question.
But let’s start from the beginning now.
The answer to the first question will be a specific month of the year.
How to Create a Longer Drop-Down List in Excel
So, if you want to make a drop-down menu with more options,
it might be a good idea to create the list somewhere else,
for example in a different spreadsheet.
I myself added a new spreadsheet, named it ‘Months’, and made a list of months
that’ll be used for our drop-down menu.
Now we’ll click back on the spreadsheet ‘Questionnaire’ and create our first drop-down list.
Click into the cell in which you want to create the drop-down menu.
Then click on the tab ‘Data’, go to ‘Data Tools’ and select the option ‘Data Validation’.
Find ‘Settings’ in the pop-up window and select ‘List’ from the menu.
Now you need to tell Excel where to find the data for the drop-down list.
Click on the icon on the right of the ‘Source’ box.
Here we’ll click through to the spreadsheet ‘Months’ and select all months we want to include in the list.
Press ‘Enter’ – and you’ve defined the contents of your drop-down list!
Click on OK and you’re done!
The column with ‘Your answer’ now contains a drop-down list from which you can choose your favorite month.
As soon as you create the list, you can pick only from the options you’ve defined.
If anyone tries to type in a different option, Excel will not allow it.
Well, let’s move on and see how to create a short drop-down menu made of only two options.
How to Create a Short Drop-Down List in Excel
We’ll have a look the second question, where, in the part ‘Your answer’, there will be just ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
As you already know, the first step will be selecting the cell in which we want to create the drop-down list.
Then we’ll click on the ‘Data’ tab, go to ‘Data Tools’ and find ‘Data Validation’.
Again, we’ll select the ‘List’ option, but now we’ll just type into the box two words
Yes’ and ‘No’ – separated with a comma.
When both options are in, click on OK and the job is done!
The simple drop-down list has been created!
If you want to know how to edit the drop-down menu, change the options, or remove the list completely,
watch our next video tutorial.
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Thanks for watching! See you soon in the next video!