I am creating a intricate ingredient counter to help with grocery provisioning.

[AcousticBruce]

Here is how it will work...

I create a bunch of meals in separate files; A few called "Roasted Tomato Bisque", "Spicy Gazpacho", "Greek Pastitcio", and many more.

I will have a excel file called "foodWeek" that is a basic calendar of the week and each day will have a drop down menu.
In this drop down menu I want it to have a list of all the files in a specific folder, such as: breakfast, lunch or dinner. Lets say I pick the lunch drop down menu, I would want "Roasted Tomato Bisque", "Spicy Gazpacho", "Greek Pastitcio", and many more to show up in the drop down.

+++How can I make a drop down list that displays files in a specific folder??

Also, I have a ingredients tab within "foodWeek" that calculates all the ingredients for the entire week. This page would have: vegetables, dairy, fruit, fresh ingredients, bread, dry, and other cells that list all the ingredients extracted from the specific files picked throughout the week.

++++So how would I have this tab search the "foodWeek" tab and extract information from the files picked in each day of the week"


So let me make this simple...

On the monday, tuesday and wednesday cell drop downs I pick these files: "Roasted Tomato Bisque", "Greek Pastitcio", and "Spicy Gazpacho". When I click on the "ingredients tab" I want to see that it extracted data from these specific files and listed the ingredients out and calculated them.

So basically, I need to know how to make files appear in a drop down. How to make another cell calculate from a file selected in ANOTHER file and list the information.


How does all this sound? Thank you so much in advance!!!

 

[oldbrewer]

in A1 put Roasted Tomato Bisque

in B1 is this formula
=vlookup(A1,mymenus,2)

mymenus is Z1 to Z500 and in AA1 is all the detail

so you put your drop down in A1
and make A1 and B! so big they fill the screen

put a print option on the screen
ingedients could be on smae sceen in C1 - same approach

 

[AcousticBruce]

in A1 put Roasted Tomato Bisque


in B1 is this formula
=vlookup(A1,mymenus,2)

This would need to be a file. Roasted Tomato Bisque is a file with data to be extracted.

How might I make a drop down list files from a specific directory?

 

[AcousticBruce]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3ev0ptca17dlsz/Ingredients%20Counter%20Test.xlsx

here is my excel file that would be an example of what I want to do. Also notice the "Shopping List" tab at the bottom.