Creating a custom editor for Domain specific Language

[partikmadaan]

Hi
I have created an editor i.e, a cell or a text box, in which text can be entered manually or from dropdown lists present in the same sheet.
If a keyword is inputted manually, it is validated that it must belong to the values in dropdown lists.

What i need is

• There should be a separate font color for keyword belonging to each list (like in programming editors).
• I can input data by selecting value from drop dropdown. It should be appended in the editor with proper syntax highlighting.
• And in case of manual input if it belongs to any dropdown it should be highlighted else underlined to show error.

For Eg. there are three dropdown A,B and C. If the entered text into the cell based editor belongs to dropdown A then it should be colored green and if it belongs to B then Orange.

First, I want to ask which component should i use as an editor.
I have 4 options that i came across :

1. Cell
2. Text Box
3. Word Document as an object
4. Rich Edit

And a little more insight on what should be the approach.

I am a newbie to VBA but i have a good background in java.