How to add a Drop Down List to an Excel Cell

How to add or delete a Drop Down List to an Excel Cell.create a data entry form in excel, easy time saving tricks, In web forms, surveys, and polls, it can be very useful to limit the choices for a selection with a simple drop down list. This is also possible in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, but the process isn't very well known or very intuitive.

Excel Drop-Down List

The drop-down list in Excel is the easiest time-saving tool which is helpful if you want to be sure that users select an item from a (dropdown) list, instead of typing their own values. Excel drop down list, aka drop-down box, or combo box is used to enter data in a spreadsheet from a pre-defined items list. The main purpose of using drop-down lists in Excel is to limit the number of choices available for the user. Apart from that, a dropdown prevents spelling mistakes and makes data input faster. 

In web forms, surveys, and polls, it can be very useful to limit the choices for a selection with a simple drop down list. This is also possible in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, but the process isn't very well known or very intuitive.

Here in this article, I will show you how to add or delete a Drop-Down List to an Excell cell.

How to Add a Drop Down List to an Excel Cell

The Drop Down List feature available right under the 'Data Validation Tool' which we can use this feature to create a Drop-Down list in Excel.

Create a Drop-down List

To create a drop-down list in Excel Sheet, do the following

• Step1: First, Open your Excel Sheet where do you want to create a drop-down list.
• Step2: Enter the items in a single row, you want to appear in the drop-down list. (Here in this example: (B4: B12))

• Step3: Click on the Excel Cell where you want to add dropdown.
• Step 4: On the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, click on the 'Data Validation' Tab.
• Step5: The 'Data Validation' dialog box appears.

• Step6: In the Allow box, click List.

• Step 7: Now, Click in the Source box and then select the range B4: B12.

• Step8: Click OK.

You can add the drop-down list to multiple Excel cells. Select the range of data input cells (step 2) instead of a single Excel cell. It even works for noncontiguous Excel cells.

Hold down the Shift key while you click the appropriate Excel cells.

Choose the correct option from the following

With this Data Validation tool, you can also create an choose the correct option like (Yes/No), (Right/Wrong) form. Here's how to create:
In the Data Validation window, on the Settings tab, do the following:

1. In the Allow box, select List.
2. In the Source box, type the items you want to appear in your drop-down menu separated by a comma (with or without spaces).

3. Make sure the In-cell dropdown box is checked; otherwise the drop-down arrow won't appear next to the cell.
4. Select or clear the Ignore blank depending on how you want to handle empty cells.

5. Click OK and you are done!

How to delete a drop-down list

If you don't want to have drop-down boxes in your Excel worksheet, you can remove them from some or all cells.

• Removing a drop-down menu from the selected cell(s)
• Deleting a drop-down list from all cells in the current sheet

Removing a drop-down menu from the selected cell(s)

To remove a drop-down list from the selected cell (s), do the following steps;

1. Select the cell with the drop-down list.
2. The 'Data Validation' dialog box appears.
3. Click Clear All.

This will delete all your created drop-down list from the selected cell (s) read below if you want to a delete a drop-down list from all cells in the current sheet this will not

Deleting an Excel drop-down list from all cells in the current sheet

This method deletes a drop-down list from all the cells containing it, retaining the currently selected values. If you created a dropdown based on a range of cells or based on a named range, the source list will also remain intact. To remove it, open the worksheet containing the drop-down list's items, and delete them.

To Delete an Excel drop-down list from all cells in the current sheet, do the following steps;

1. Select any cell containing your drop-down list.
2. Click Data Validation on the Data tab.
3. In the Data Validation window, on the Settings tab, select the "Apply these changes to all other cells with the same settings" check box.
4. Once you check it, all of the cells referencing this Excel Data Validation list will get selected, as you can see in the screenshot below.
5. Click the Clear All button to delete the drop-down list.
6. Click OK to save the changes and close the Data Validation window.

That's it, you have now come across how to add or delete a Drop Down List to an Excel Cell, If you found this article interesting then please share this article to let your friends also know.