Hi All, I hope you can help. I'm using Excel 2003. I have one workbook wich
contains many worksheets. These worksheet contain information regarding our
conference rooms (what equipment, facilities, phone No's Etc). What I would
like to do is to create a drop down list containing all the names of our
conference rooms. When a room is selected I want all the information to be
displayed. I know I can select all the cells I need in a workbook and give
them a name (name range). So is it possible to link options in a drop down
list to these name ranges and then display them on the same sheet as the drop
down list.

I'm still getting to grips with this so am pretty much a novice, if there is
a better way of doing this then I'm all ears. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

hi
yes, what you need is two dropdowns.
see this site
http://www.contextures.com/xlDataVal02.html

regards
FSt1

"Drop Down lists." wrote:

Hi All, I hope you can help. I'm using Excel 2003. I have one workbook wich
contains many worksheets. These worksheet contain information regarding our
conference rooms (what equipment, facilities, phone No's Etc). What I would
like to do is to create a drop down list containing all the names of our
conference rooms. When a room is selected I want all the information to be
displayed. I know I can select all the cells I need in a workbook and give
them a name (name range). So is it possible to link options in a drop down
list to these name ranges and then display them on the same sheet as the drop
down list.

I'm still getting to grips with this so am pretty much a novice, if there is
a better way of doing this then I'm all ears. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

Hope this would work out for you.
here I give you the steps for Ofice 2007.
It might be the same steps even for 2003.

It is a very simple option.Validation lists. If you want to limit input in
certain cells, then you can create drop-down validation lists.

1. On a blank worksheet in your workbook, create a list of the items that
will be in the first drop-down list. For instance, create a list of
departments in your company, such as Sales, Research, Executive, Production,
etc. (These should be single-word entries in the list.)

2. Select the list of items you created in step 1 and name the range using a
name such as "Departments."

3. On the same worksheet, create a list of items that could appear in the
secondary drop-down list. There should be one list for each entry in the list
you made in step 1. For instance, you could create a list of Sales personnel,
a list of Research personnel, etc.

4. List by list, select the lists you created in step 3. Give each list a
single-word name that matches the names used in the list in step 1, i.e.,
Sales, Research, Executive, etc.

5. Switch to the worksheet where you want to have the drop-down lists appear.

6. Select the cells where users should be able to enter items from your
first list--the one created in step 1.

7. Choose Validation from the Data menu or, if you are using Excel 2007,
click the Data tab of the ribbon, then click the Data Validation option in
the Data Tools group. Excel displays the Data Validation dialog box.

8. Using the Allow drop-down list, choose List. (Click here to see a related
figure.)

9. In the Source box, enter an equal sign followed by the name you created
in step 2. For instance, =Departments.

10 Click OK. You have now specified that only information from your first
list can be entered into the cells you selected in step 6.

11. Select the cells where users should be able to enter items from the
dependent lists. For instance, select the cells just to the right of the
cells you selected in step 6.
12. Choose Validation from the Data menu or, if you are using Excel 2007,
click the Data tab of the ribbon, then click the Data Validation option in
the Data Tools group. Excel displays the Data Validation dialog box.

13. Using the Allow drop-down list, choose List.

14. In the Source box, enter a formula that uses the INDIRECT function. If
the first cell of the range selected in step 11 is cell B3, and you want that
first cell to be dependent on what is chosen in cell A3, then you would use
the following formula:
=INDIRECT(A3)

15. Click OK.

That's it. Now people can only select from your major list if they are using
one of the cells specified in step 6, and from the appropriate dependent
lists if they choose one of the cells in step 11.

There are lots of different variations of this approach (using data
validation). You can find more information on some of these approaches by
visiting these Web pages



James Mathew