How to limit cell entries only to dropdown menu (and nothing else)?

Rnkhch

Well-known Member
Joined
Apr 28, 2018
Messages
528
Office Version
  1. 365
Platform
  1. Windows
Hello,

I thought this would be straightforward or already answered somewhere on the web, but I couldn't get a clear answer.

My impression was that defining a dropdown menu list for cell data validation would restrict cell entries only to items from that menu. But to my surprise I found out today that in addition to those dropdown items, I could type in anything else that I wanted to 😱. (My dropdown menu is designed so well that it gives the students the options from 1,2,3, and 4 and every time one of these are selected, the remaining cells don't show that number, so if 1 is selected, then only 2,3,4, remain for the subsequent cells.) But one of my students showed me today that not only numbers from 1 to 4, but anything else (even letters etc.) can also be typed in there as if the data validation dropdown wasn't even there🤦‍♂️.

Any ideas why this is the case? Am I missing anything 🧐? Any solutions?

Please direct me to any posts address this if available.

(P.S. I can define conditional formatting to highlight cells that get anything besides 1,2,3, or 4, but still it doesn't make sense that the dropdown doesn't take care of the situation by itself)
 
Last edited:
Actually, I don't need to use LAMBDA. I mostly started using LAMBDAs to make files faster and smaller as I can change a long formula to something very short and compact. I guess another reason I got into LAMBDAs was that I could now make all kinds of cool functions 😁

But OMG, I just got rid of two layers of LAMBDAs and put the main formula in validation dialog, and it worked!!! Now I get the error message if I put any other numbers or text.

Thanks for all your hard work preparing all the samples for me. You are the best 🤗

(P.S. There is another thread of ours that I haven't had a chance to continue working on, but after I finish this project, I'll get back to that one and post there and ask for your help 😁)
 
Last edited:
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