Dropdowns

[Carl Hilton]

My wife's school is mandating that they put test scores in a spreadsheet to
admin can print out the entire sheet. I want to add a worksheet that will
use a dropdown to list the student's names from Col A, and then populate the
rest of this worksheet with the specifics from the Student's ROW.

My question is how to get the values into the dropdown... I assume it will
be a validtation using something like VLOOKUP, but once VLOOKUP has
validated the drop down, how can I populate the rest of the sheet?

Thanks
Carl

 

[JulieD]

Hi Carl

i would use Data / Validation to get the values into the drop down and then
VLOOKUP to populate the other information - here's an answer i wrote to a
similar question recently ... the "subject matter" is different but the
concepts are the same:

---
use a combination of data / validation to create the drop down list and
VLOOKUP function to populate the related information

assuming that in Sheet2 you have the following

..............A..............B

1......Item.....Value

2.....Item1.....10.00

3.....Item2.....15.00

4.....Item3..... 20.00

now select from A1 to the end of your list (A4, in the above example) and
choose from the menu,

Insert / Name / Create - ensure Top Row is checked and click okay - you've
created a named range called "Item" (or whatever the title in A1 is)

now select from A1 to the end of the list for all columns (B4 in the above
example) and click inside the name box (left of formula bar) and type
MyTable and press enter - we've created a second named range.

Now click in the cell in Sheet1 where you want your drop down list to appear
and choose Data / Validation from the menu - in the settings tab, choose
List from the Allow drop down box and then click inside the white box under
this and press the F3 key - this will bring up a list of your range names,
choose "Item" (or whatever your first range was called) and click Ok. You
will now have a drop down list in this cell.

Now click in the cell where you want the related information to appear and
type

=VLOOKUP(A1,MyTable,2,false)

where A1 is the cell reference with your drop down list in it - you can

use

the F3 key for the MyTable bit too.

now choose an item & see the related information appear ... delete the item
and you'll get

a #NA error - this can be supressed by embedding your VLOOKUP in an IF
statement e.g.

=IF(A1="","",VLOOKUP(A1,MyTable,2,false))

where A1 is the cell reference with your drop down list in it

hope this helps, let us know how you go

Cheers
JulieD