A new twist to the validation drop-down width question.

[Spongebob]

Through searches I am seeing that many people are asking how to shrink an
oversized drop-down from a data validation cell. What I want to do is to
GROW one. With help from the gurus here I now have a validation that has
both a code and a description in the drop-down, but when one entry is
selected only the code appears in the cell. It works wonderfully
.....except for the fact that my skinny column does not display even half of
the overall width of the drop-down. So what I am attempting to do is to rely
on the validation glitch and make my drop-down wider then it is intended to
be. It has happened to me before in another file, so I know it can and will
happen. I just can't reproduce it.

I have tried to merge cells above, below and on either side of the column of
cells but nothing. Has anyone here firured out the pattern?

Thanks,
Jeffrey K. Ries

 

[Norman Jones]

Hi Spongbob,

See:

http://www.contextures.com/xlDataVal08.html#Wider

 

[Spongebob]

Norman,

This is a very interresting solution. It is not what I expected, but I
think it will work nicely.

I did notice one strange behavior tho. Every time I click a cell anywhere
in the worksheet the function is activated and will resize the column. Most
of the time it is simply resizing it to its current size, but it does cause
the screen to blink with every click. I understand how this works and why it
is necessary when written like this, however I was wondering if it is
possible to approach it from another angle. Is it possible to use a gotfocus
event with a rance of cells? I have looked into the help files, but I cannot
find an adequate way to write this code - I keep getting errors and my VBA
knowledge is nearly non-existant. If this is possible I could use the cell
widening code there and the cell narrowing code with a LostFocus event.

Am I crazy?

Jeffrey K. Ries