How do you get drop downs in Excel to enter data in cells?

Q: I’ve seen spreadsheets where some of the cells are drop downs and allow you to select from a list of values the entry you want to make. How do you configure a cell in Excel to provide a dropdown?

A: The function you are looking for is called “Data Validation”. Through this excel function you can create a drop down from different sources from a list you can type to a range you can define in the spreadsheet. There are many interesting features like the ability to not allow other values to be entered or displaying a warning message if they do. I found a very good tutorial online that explains this functionality at: Contextures. The most helpful tip I found out (the only one I didn’t know) is that you can press the F4 key and it will display a list of ranges available for use. This makes life so convenient specially when you can’t type things correctly and don’t know what went wrong.