How to create a Drop-down List in Excel (Absolute beginner)

Today’s lesson for absolute beginners so we are going to follow step by step process for this tutorial. So, what is today's tutorial? Well, it’s a very simple yet very essential topic to learn in Excel. 

In this tutorial, we are going to learn “How to create a Drop-down List in Excel” but at first, briefly we will discuss the reason to use a Drop-down list in Excel.

(Arrow is used to indicate the Drop-down button)

Take a deep look at the above image first. Here, you can see an ICON just below the Label named ‘Brand’ and this is the thing called Drop-down icon and by clicking this icon we will get a list for our specific work.

So, without furthermore delay, let’s roll to our today’s tutorial……………..

First, open you MS-Excel Program and choose a blank workbook. Then, choose your cell number where you want to create Drop-down list. 

It will be a good practice if you label the above cell with any meaningful name. Just like in the following image, we use Month & Brand for labeling the below Drop-down list and it’s really helpful to find out what does the list actually means. 

Next, in the cell where you want to create Drop-down list just select it and go to the Data section, here marked in a red circle.

Then, click the Data Validation tab again marked in a red circle and a new window will pop up like this image.

Form here, select the List value from the Drop-down menu and if you want to specify the list values then just type those values in the Source field – marked in a red circle in the below image.

Well, you just create your first Drop-down list in Excel. See the below image,

(You will get exactly the same type of screen if you exactly follow us)

Now, for your exercise try to build the following Drop-down list as shown in the below image. 

But, here we will not use list values manually. Here, we will use a dynamic way for the list input. So, take a closer look, how you can do such thing in Excel for a Drop-down list.

Initially, this process is almost the same as before. But, at first, you need to fill up some cells by inserting some data values, like the following image we insert some demo data for the label ‘Brand’.

We use some giant computer brands name for the purpose of this tutorial & only for this tutorial and we do not intend to promote those brands for any cause (check our Disclaimer page please).

Then, just select the red arrow marked cell and go to the tab named Data ® Data Validation and a new pop up screen will come. Then from the Settings tab of the new screen under the validation criteria select ® Allow: List and Source: just click the Icon at the right side of blank field. A red circle marked in the above image.

Just click OK and select the column header (for our case it will be L).  It will automatically select the range required for the Drop-down list values. Like the following image,

After that, just click the right side icon once again or just hit Enter of your keyboard and just click OK. 

You just created your Drop-down list dynamically. Isn’t it very easy?

For your clarification, here is the full process added here in a gif file. Take a look at it, now.

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