Just imagine - and yes, this is another Rock'n'Roll example like this one) you have a list of band members like the one below:
| A | |
| 1 | Member |
| 2 | Skin |
| 3 | Ace |
| 4 | Cass |
| 5 | Mark |
To create your list, there are two ways, depending on what version of MSXL you have.
Excel 2003
Go to Data - Data Validation.
Excel 2007
Go to the Data Ribbon and click the Data Validation button.
MSXL will come up with a dialog box. In the settings tab choose the entry "List" from the "Allow" dropdown menu. Please make sure that the checkboxes "Ignore blank" and "In-cell dropdown" are ticked.
Now in the source field enter the range you would like to have in your list which in our example would be "=$A$2:$A$5". Click OK. There you have a nice little dropdown which you also could refer to.
My perosonal advice for using this quick method to get a dropdown is that you format this cell in some way different to the other ones. One problem with this method is that if you "leave" the cell by going to another one, you will not see the dropdown button anymore. So I simply formatted it with a border and some colors. Here is what it looks like:
Let's see, I think tomorrow I will post something on the index function where we will use this little technique. As always, please feel free to leave any comment :-)
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