DATA VALIDATION

B

barryderay

I have a field asking for a county name. There are 77 possible counties to
enter. I want to ensure that the user enters a valid county and has it spelt
correctly. Is there a way to do this? Can I have the validation point to text
file with all the acceptable entries? Also is there a way to format the cell
to convert anything entered into all upper case?
 
A

Alan

In a convenient empty column in the workbook, preferably out of site eg a
hiddeen worksheet, enter all 77 County names (laborious I know). Name this
range 'county' or whatever and in your input field go Data Validation,
choose 'List' and in the dialogue box below enter
=county
Enter a suitable error message and that's it done.
Changing the case of inputted data can be done with VBA code, but not by
formatting, suggest you ask this in Programming,
Regards,
 
B

barryderay

OK I figured it out and it works. But the user can still type in whatever
they want. Now they do have the option of using the dropdown menu but they
are not forced to. Is there a way to do this using the custom setting and
entering a formula pointing to the named range "county'?
 
A

Alan

Highlight the whole range containing the County names, then, in the namebox,
on the left of the formula bar, (the one that says A1 if you select A1),
click it and type in the name of your choice then hit enter. You need to do
this with a list in Data Validation unless the list is on the same worksheet
as your validated entry field, it wont take a cell reference to another
sheet like Sheet3!A:A77
The advantage is that if you were using a range like A1:N87 in several
formulas, by naming the range to say 'myrange' you use that instead of
clumsy cell references and you don't need to worry about Absolute (dollar
signs) and Relative (no dollar signs) when dragging formulas down a range.
Regards,
 
A

Alan

If its done correctly the user can only either use the drop down list or
type in a value contained in the range 'county'. Don't have any blank cells
in the range, if you do have any, unckeck 'Ignore Blank'
Its all there in Help by the way,
Regards,
 
B

barryderay

Thanks a lot Alan! This worked great!You have been quite helpful. I
appreciate your time.
 
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