Forum Discussion
Dropdown within a dropdown?
Hi brilliant excel wizards!
I have a sheet that contains the dropdown options for a budget. I used data validation on another sheet to create the dropdown. The problem is that there are a LOT of options. Here is a partial of the choices within the dropdown:
| HOME |
| Mortgage / Rent |
| Insurance (Rental/Home) |
| Electricity |
| Gas / Oil |
| Water/Sewer/Trash |
| Phone |
| Cable |
| Internet |
| Furnishings / Applicances |
| Lawn / Garden |
| HOA Fees |
| Maintenance / Improvements |
| Other |
| ENTERTAINMENT |
| Streaming Subscriptions |
| Video / DVD / Movies |
| Gaming |
| Concerts / Plays |
As you can imagine, the list is quite long. It would be wonderful if somehow, they first select the main category and then the line-items for the selected category show as additional options. I am using office 365. I don't want to assume that excel isn't capable of doing this in one cell so I thought I would throw it out there to you all! Maybe it is possible?
If that doesn't work, I was going to try to solve the problem with using color but I don't see how to set up a dropdown to display the color (as you can do in GSheets) within the dropdown list. I see I can use conditional formatting once the selection is made but that doesn't really solve the usability issue.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
- How about this searchable tree view picker?
https://b23.tv/DqK8qss I'd use two cells: one with a drop-down list of the categories, and the other with a drop-down list of the options for the category selected in the first one.
- Thanks! I was hoping to avoid using a second cell. Is there a way to actually show color in the dropdown list? As far as I can tell, it looks like that is only possible with conditional formatting once the selection has been made.
You are correct - it is not possible to color items in a drop-down list.
