A dropdown list in Google Sheets allows people to select options that are already present. There will be a few options. They will show up when you click the dropdown icon. Then the user has to select any one option from that. In Google Sheets, it’s quite easy to create a dropdown list. I will show you in this guide how to do it.
Sometimes multiple people may be accessing or working on the same online spreadsheet. One may enter the wrong data and it may mess up the whole information of the sheet. So, with a drop-down list, it becomes simple to directly select from options that are already present.
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Making A Dropdown List In Google Sheets
Here are the steps.
- Launch Google Sheets
- Then select the cells within which you wish to create the dropdown list
- Click on Data by navigating to the menu bar
- Under that select Data Validation
- Then in the dialog box under the Criteria tab choose between List From a Range and List of Items
Explaining List of Range and List of Items
Just to avoid confusion let me clarify between these two components. List of Range consists of values from a range of cells from one sheet that is to be used in another sheet. In the second worksheet when you click on the drop-down list, these values from the 1st worksheet will appear.
Secondly, in the List of Items, you can enter some values in text or number. In this option, you cannot put up data values from cells of another worksheet.
- Now continuing the steps from the previous section let us select List of Items
- Then put up some values separated by commas [let us create some even numbers in the drop-down list]
- Tick the checkbox Show dropdown list in Cell
- Enable the radio button for the Show Warning option. This means if someone enters an invalid value, a warning will show up
- If you select the Reject Input option, it won’t allow presenting information that’s not on the list
- Enable the Show validation help text. This will help specify what values the user should choose
- Let’s say for the above example you enter an odd number 3, then you will see the below message about the invalid value. It is invalid because the value must be something between 2,4,6 or 8 which are even.
- Click Save
- This is how the dropdown list will look. It is a drop-down list for putting up even numbers.
Removing Validation
For removing any validation you have set,
- Go to Data
- Navigate and access Data Validation
- Edit or remove the values that you have set up in the list of items
- Click the Remove validation button to remove it
That’s it. This is all about how you can create a dropdown list in Google Sheets. I hope this guide was informative.
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