Excel: Validate!

DataValidationdropdown

When building my Social Media spreadsheet, I want to enter my subject keywords and trigger keywords consistently. Minor typos can make it difficult to find all the relevant posts and worse; prevent scheduled posts, tweets and pins from being published on time. This is why I find the Data Validation feature in Excel so useful. As you can see in the picture above, once Data Validation is in action, my data entry is restricted to a preset list of options.

Data Validation Ribbon
Find the Data Validation tool on the Data ribbon

Since Excel 2007, the Data Validation tool has been on the Data Ribbon. Simply select the cells you want to apply Data Validation to and press the Data Validation button and select Data Validation. Then the Data Validation Settings dialogue box will appear.

Data Validation Settings
Data Validation Settings

To keep the active sheet “clean”, I use a named range on another sheet as my data source (I’ve talked about that previously). Here you can see it’s called PostTypes. But you can enter short lists directly into the Source box:

Data Validation Settings
Data Validation Settings

However, I find in the long run (especially for long lists) keeping the list source on another sheet makes maintenance easier.


This post is originally from 2016. If you want help with the newest and classic features in Excel drop me a line at catharine@mytechgenie.ca