Dynamic Excel Drop Down Lists - PLUS how to get SEARCHABLE Drop Down Lists! 

Mynda - I first used Supercalc in London in 1984 and used Excel when it started. As an investment banker I immediately understood the power of pivot tables and used them with SQL and one of our data team, as well as learning VBA myself. After working in New York, San Francisco, and Geneva, I'm retired back in London and Paris running three private companies. In my working life I've been lucky to work with some brilliant Excel people. My point in writing this lengthy and, to your subscribers, pointless comment is to say - yours is the only Excel channel I look at, even a topic like this is worth watching as I know you'll have something truly useful and interesting to say, eg I can't believe I knew nothing of UNIQUE dynamic arrays - how much time have a wasted! Agh! Thanks for producing such fabulous and diligent content. At 64 I have sent many of your videos to family and young friends starting out in finance - telling them they have to know this stuff to be efficient and have the skills so that they can own the data and the decisions. Richard

One the best "dynamic drop-down list" tutorials out there on RU-vid, currently. thanks ma'am.

That part of using unique and sort is amazing for those with office 2021or Microsoft 365. I always get something new from your tutorials..big thanks

Learn a new thing again.. Thanks for uploads..

One of the tutorials on drop down lists. You answered my question about the data source being on a different sheet. Thank you so much.

Good Morning, II'm in Canada. I discovered your RU-vid capsules recently. Knowing Excel quite well (not to say very well) (a little modesty), I have seen applications which can surely provide a different view of my personal data. Thank you for everything. I will follow you ! Have a good one !

Again, strangely, just what I particularly needed to know.

Thanks for your great validation updates 🙏❤️👍😍

Excellent, nice tips! Thanks Mynda!

Awesome.. Simple and easy to follow.. Thank you so much..

Wish I found this video sooner! Very clear & concise. Thank you so much. Liked & subscribed

Always inspiring !

lot of thanks for you ! really this is what I was missing to understand especially using the height and width in offset formula . please keep going posting such valuable videos .

I thought I was tripping when it cell reference changed when you had it as an absolute reference when you first selected the data. I use to always use offset to make it dynamic. This is much easier. Always a fan of your work!

MUCH better than other videos out there.

Thanks video explaining various options for drop down lists nicely.

in the other hand, i adore your accent. i always love british accent

Outstanding! Best regards from Limón, Costa Rica!

Thank you for sharing your expertise.

Thanks for the information. Usually, when I use a table on another sheet I would use the indirect command for data validation. Example: =INDIRECT("ExtCategoryList[Categories]") The defined name seems a lot easier.

Short and Informative as usual

Really Helpful it became useful to me for Analysing my Personal Budget more convinietly.👍👍😀

I found this tutorial very useful and will share with my team. Thank you !

THis was exactly what I was looking for, thank you.

Nice video. Also, I have found an efficient and v. simple way to reference to every table in workbook in a drop down list then reference to the table's headers in another drop down list and finally get a unique list of that column in a 3rd dependent drop down list.... and Only using the INDIRECT fuction.... happy to share my findings with you 😊

Thank you a lot, that was really valuable, I like your videos, they are straightforward and detailed

Thank you. I knew I could do this and couldn't work out why I was failing yesterday (I have the source data in different tab).

So much easier creating good dynamic validation now, no need for offset formulas. You can also wrap your unique formula in the sort function as well.

Thanks Mynda! Great update for me on the latest.😁

Excellent video Mynda!

Hi Mynda!Super Helpful Tutorial..Thank You :)

thank you for teaching in love

First, thank you for all the informative info, and professional videos. I want to mark that Data Validation list will not be updated as shown in the video if the list is on another sheet (maybe a bug?).

Perfect. Couldnt get my list to update with added items on another sheet and define it with a name fixed that. Thanks!

U rock girl.. !!!!!

very helpful video Thank you

3:55 That explains why my coworker struggled with dropdowns. For some reason, people are amazing at not actually using Excel tables but using regular background colors to "show" a table.

Brilliant!Thank you, it did the trick

Great video. You use the list in a column. Is it possible to use the same list in different cells that they are not in the same column?

Thanks

Very timely information! Would you provide a recommendation on setting up something similar to a form for users to query a dataset, using 5 fields, to get to a unique record? I have a dataset of > 800K records that users need to find a unique record based on the 5 fields. I can use Excel 365 or Power BI for this form.

Do You know Mynda !!! I Love You ! Aaah, Off Course ! You know it ! Kanwaljit

Very good video.

Thank you so much!

Mynda - many thanks! Let's hope that MS push out those updates to the wider community as soon as possible. Also, enable you to directly reference a structured Table name directly in the DV List Source dialog. That can't be an oversight - there must be a good reason why that isn't supported?

Definitely timely... I would welcome something describing the following: Dropdown List of Names - BUT - when selecting the Name - it actually returns a numeric value associated with the Name. Ex: I have a TBL with 2 columns - Region No & Region; I want the User to choose the Region - BUT - I need the Region No to be returned... Region No = 1 and Region = EU Dropdown shows = EU but when selected - the value for Region No = 1 is placed in the cell. I can accomplish with a multitude of steps - but I'm thinking some variation of Data Validation would work

Can you have Two Columns of Data to select. E.G. Tour Name + Tour Date ?

Another thanks from a very satisfied follower! Is there a way to bypass Excel on using two columns to create a drop down list? And thanks!

Very clear.... Can you suggest me formula for date series when date of Saturday & Sunday are automatically removed when draging that formula from cell A2 to A30 ?

Do you have a video on how to connect multiple drop down list? Thank you

So when you use an alternate worksheet and a table, then you use a defined name, when you are filling in the list for data validation, type "=" and then use the F3 key to see the list of Named ranges.

Really useful as it's really annoying when lists don't update when your data is on a different tab.

Lots of thanks for you ! but how to get rid of blanks while ticking on the "ignore blank" Data validation box?

Thanks, Mynda. I really thought that you had solved my problem when you spoke about named ranges on another sheet. Alas, it doesn't seem to have helped. Nor has moving the list back to the current sheet. Problem: I want to use searching inside drop-down lists. I had it working in Excel 2019. Then it stopped working (probably because I moved the list to another sheet, or I hid it) So I upgraded to Office 365 (not MS Insider). It still doesn't work. Suggestions?

I really don't understand why such a usefull function would be used online but then excluded in the desktop version..

As always, this was very informative. I wonder why the data validation table update was rolled back to no longer auto update as new items are added. The spilled ranges do auto update

Hi Mynda! This is a fantastic video. I am having an issue I'm hoping you've encountered. I have a bunch of data validation lists in cells in some complex worksheets. Sometimes after running some VBA to automate some updates and other functions, the dropdown lists are frozen (but only sort of). 1. I can click on the cell, the arrow becomes visible, if I click the arrow, the list is displayed, but I cannot left click to select any of the options... 2. However, I CAN use my Arrow keys to move up and down the list, then hit enter and the selection updates. 3. If I try to click a selection as normal, I get a windows sound almost like there's a dialog box open or something. I've tried using the Escape key to clear that, no luck. *If I save and re-open the file, everything works again. Have you ever run across this?

Mynda, thanks for the beautiful video. Although I am registered to Beta channel and I have an Office 365 license, unfortunately I cannot use many features used after a while. Excel software developers need to solve this quickly. We use many formulas developed for test purposes in our data analyzes, but then the formulas in our work have not started to work because the access to these formulas was restricted! I have a question for data verification: Can we create more than one data verification list in a single cell?

Thank you! Great review of the nuances of Lists in Data Validation, some of which had left me scratching my head from time to time. Question: when I explored employing the DefinedName approach (as a 365 user), I didn't need to add the #. Worked fine w/o it. In fact, with the # added on, I got an error msg ~"Source currently evaluates to an error. Do you want to continue". [And I'm happy to report that I still have the searchable drop down list] Thought it might be worth putting my experience on the table for others' sake. Again, thanks !

Thanks 👍

In earlier versions of Excel, If I am not wrong 2003 and before, even simple list was not allowed from another sheet for which we had to use name manager

Great Video’s! I have a question about 06.45 in this video. In this case I still need to make a list on a separate sheet and then use this as the reference in de date validation section. Would it also be possible to directly write in the date validation section>List>Source the formula, like: =unique(data[Geography]) I have tried different options but I couldn’t get it to work.

Thank you for the video, but it didn’t work on dates data, i don’t know why, so if anyone knows please inform me.

Can you make drop-down lists from data models?

Mynda, thanks! if I want show two column showing in the dropdown but only return information of one value, e.g. have Product ID /Name showing in the drop down, once select only return the Product ID. is that possible? thanks

Can I make a drop down list pulling data from different tables? I am finding an error when I do this as I am unable to use union

I encountered error saying "The Source currently evaluates to an error." How do I solve this? Appreciate your help. Thank you in advance.

Thanks. Can we updates the information of the data validation drop list ? How?

I have noticed that if I change a one of the items in the data validation list, example Utility to Utilities, it only changes it in that list but if I have already categorised all my product and applied a „category” from the drop down section prior to updating the name, it doesn’t change the name on my categories list and leaves the name as it was before. I also set up DV „stop” if a category does not exist in the DV list but it doesn’t tell me there is an issue. Is there a way to fix this?

I really like your lessons but being a bit green on excel, i find myself floating most of the times. How can i get introductory lessons?

I have an Excel sheet that contains a linelist of measles cases , the province from which it was reported and the district from which the case was reported. Column A unique identity number of a case, Column B- province of the reported case, Column C -district of the reported case. This Excel sheet is sent to me every week as new cases are reported. Another sheet contains a list of all the provinces in column A and list of the districts within each province in column B. Is there way to create a dynamic table or list that shows districts yet to report a case for each province such that as more results are receive the list automatically updates or reduces

I found in 365 with a drop down list on 1 sheet, to use it on another in a drop down I had to make the source: =DDList!C$3# otherwise the source changed the reference to C3# to C4#, etc. Do you confirm that happens to you as well? I didn't think it should change.

How do you make the font in the drop-down list larger ?

Madam, How to remove the blank from the slicer.. Kindly advise me

When i update the table, the drop down list is not getting updated , even though the source list is formatted as table

Hello blogger, thank you for your sharing, I watched a few videos you made, which are very lively and interesting, how can I contact you?

at 6:10 just use F3 on keyboard as shortcut.

I had a date with product Group and product name I want to populate by selecting a product group and below list of product name should appear Can any one help me on this

Good afternoon Sir, How to get end date and time if i have start day and time together and to add "n" working hours excluding non working hours. example 1) if start date=02/06/2022 02:00 and to add 4:00 working hours and the working hours are from 08:00 to 18:00 and the non working hours to be excluded are of from 18:00 to 08:00 and the end date should be like 02/06/2022 12:00. what is the formula for this one sir. 2) if start date=02/06/2022 16:00 and to add 4:00 working hours and the working hours are from 08:00 to 18:00 the and the non working hours to be excluded are of from 18:00 to 08:00 and the end date should be like 03/06/2022 10:00. what is the formula for this one sir. In CCC to be completed time also same formula given sir. Can u please help me with the formula sir?

Drop list on google is better. I hope excel can update 😌

What were the chances of that??? I was using a spreadsheet (I do everyday!) but the data in the list wasn't available in the drop down so I had to do a bit of research (google) to sort it out. However, now I can learn more about it and properly :D