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You can reduce your workload in Excel 2007 and 2010 by creating your own dropdown lists with text values that you set. To do this, open a new Excel sheet, then create a heading for your dropdown list. To demonstrate, we’ve created a question about ranking popular sports in order of personal preference. So, we’ve listed four sports Football, Rugby, Cricket, and Tennis  in rows B4 to E4.

Next, to create a dropdown list that contains these sports in cells A6 to A9, select the cells A6 to A9. Click the Data tab on the Ribbon, then in the Data Tools section go to Data Validation (in the top right). Click the dropdown menu at the right of Data Validation and select the fi rst option, Data Validation. In the window that appears, click the Allow dropdown menu and select List. Two ticked boxes (‘Ignore blank’ and ‘In-cell dropdown’) and a Source box will now appear. Th e Source box contains a small icon with a red arrow. Click this icon and you’ll see a single-lined, blank Data Validation box. Highlight the cells that contain the text you want to appear in your dropdown menu (B4 to E4).

A code containing a mixture of symbols and letters will appear in the Source text box in the Data Validation window (see screenshot, left). Click the small icon to the right of the box to expand the window, then click OK. Th e cells you highlighted previously (A6 to A9) will now contain dropdown lists with the options shown in cells B4 to E4.