When you set up a validation dropdown, Excel won't let someone enter an invalid value. Add some text to guide the person using the spreadsheet. Episode 380 shows you how.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen.
For the past couple of days, we've been talking about using Data Validation to set up a drop-down list right on the worksheet.
Now we do that using data validation, and in the past couple of netcasts we looked at the first tab, the Settings tab, where we change it to be a list, and then specified where our list is.
There's also two other tabs here that I want to show you.
The Error Alert tab controls what Excel does when they try and enter an invalid value.
So rather than just have the generic “This is an invalid value.” pop-up, you can, kind of, guide the person to tell them what to do.
So for example, ii can put a title in, “Please Select From the List” and then, kind of a nice error message, “When you are choosing the district, select from the list provided.” Now this is the message they get once the error has happened.
There's also an Input Message place, and this actually pops a little tooltip up.
And so you can tell them to “Select From the List”, ”Use the dropdown arrow to see a valid list of districts.” And by hitting these two extra tabs, the Input Message and the Error Alert, your validation becomes much more useful.
When they select that cell, first of all, little tooltip pops up telling them what to do.
And then if they try and enter something different, the message that pops up gives your title and description, instead of the generic title and description.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel!
For the past couple of days, we've been talking about using Data Validation to set up a drop-down list right on the worksheet.
Now we do that using data validation, and in the past couple of netcasts we looked at the first tab, the Settings tab, where we change it to be a list, and then specified where our list is.
There's also two other tabs here that I want to show you.
The Error Alert tab controls what Excel does when they try and enter an invalid value.
So rather than just have the generic “This is an invalid value.” pop-up, you can, kind of, guide the person to tell them what to do.
So for example, ii can put a title in, “Please Select From the List” and then, kind of a nice error message, “When you are choosing the district, select from the list provided.” Now this is the message they get once the error has happened.
There's also an Input Message place, and this actually pops a little tooltip up.
And so you can tell them to “Select From the List”, ”Use the dropdown arrow to see a valid list of districts.” And by hitting these two extra tabs, the Input Message and the Error Alert, your validation becomes much more useful.
When they select that cell, first of all, little tooltip pops up telling them what to do.
And then if they try and enter something different, the message that pops up gives your title and description, instead of the generic title and description.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel!
