Hi, all,

I've combed the discussion group as well as some of the great web resources
for Excel programming & worksheet functions, and I've come to spend way too
much time on what should be a simple data validation formula. First, I just
wanted to prevent an empty cell in Column A. I noticed that data validation
doesn't seem to kick in if you Tab or Enter over the cell -- DV only is
working when the cursor's in the cell, by typing or clicking in cell or
formular bar.

I have tried the following custom validation rules without success, both
with and without the $ before the A:
=LEN($A)0
=NOT(ISBLANK($A)
=NOT(EMPTY)

They do work if I have the cursor in the cell, but again, Tabbing or
pressing Enter bypasses Data Validation -- am I left with figuring out how to
disable the Tab & Enter keys, or with reexaming the cell entires when the
user leaves this routine? Yuck!

Since I'm in it this far, I also want to have the length of the entry be
from 1 to 64 characters (it's a text field, alphanumeric OK) -- I had this
part working already, but wanted to add the "non-empty" requirement as well,
and now I'm stuck.

If I could also enforce unique entries in the entire column, that woudl be
ideal. I found a formula for this but it's not working. I think it is overly
stringent, preventing even substrings, too, which is not what I want.

Here's the data validation formulas I was using for uniqueness:

This entry goes in DV in cell A1:

=ISERROR(MATCH(A1,A2:A50,0))

and this one in cells A2:A9000

=ISERROR(MATCH(A2,INDIRECT("$A$1:$A$"&ROW()-1),0))

Your help is greatly appreciated, especailly at this late hour,

<grins

Will Finkle
San Diego