what I am trying to do is the following

in column B I have the following formula in rows 10-20 (row 11 would have
$A11, etc)

=IF(ISBLANK($A10),"","Do something")

in column C I have a data validation box that the user can choose something
that refers to this particular line.

is there a way i can incorporate a similar formula so that if A10 is blank,
then don't display any text, and if it is not blank then display the first
value in the validation list so that the user can select?

hopefully this makes sense

thanks!

J