How to create or insert drop down list in cells in Excel?

Drop-down lists in Excel are a powerful tool for improving data entry efficiency, ensuring data consistency, and reducing errors. Whether you're managing a small dataset or a large database, creating a drop-down list can streamline your workflow. This guide will walk you through the steps to create and customize drop-down lists in Excel.

Create data validation drop down list with build-in in Excel

Please do as follows to create a data validation drop-down list in Excel.

1. Select where you will place the drop-down lists.
2. Click "Data" > "Data Validation". See screenshot:

   

3. In the popping up "Data Validation" dialog box, configure as follows:
   1. Under the "Settings" tab, select "List" from the "Allow" drop down list;
   2. In the "Source" box, select the source data to display in the drop-down list. Alternatively, values can be entered manually and separated by commas.

   

   3. It is optional to configure the fields under the "Input Message" tab and the "Error Alert" tab as shown in the following screenshots.
      
   4. After finishing all the settings, click "OK".

Now the drop-down list is created.

Quickly create a simple drop down list with an amazing tool

Here highly recommend the Quickly create a drop-down list utility of "Kutools for Excel". With this tool, you can easily create a drop down list with several clicks only.

After installing Kutools for Excel, select "Kutools" > "Drop-down list" > "Quickly Create a Dropdown List" to access this feature, and then configure as follows.

1. First, select a range of cells where you want to display the drop-down list.
2. Then, specify the source data. Kutools offers three convenient ways to define the drop-down list source:
   • "Refer to Cell": If you’ve already prepared the source data in your worksheet, select this option and choose the corresponding cell range.
   • "Manually Enter Value": Choose this option to type items directly, separating each entry with a comma.
   • "Custom Lists": Use this option to quickly create drop-down lists with predefined series like months or days—just select the desired list.
3. Click the "OK" button. See screenshot:

   

Now the simple drop down list is created as the below screenshot shown:

In this article, we discussed how to create data validation drop-down lists using Excel's built-in features and introduced the method of quickly generating simple drop-down lists with "Kutools for Excel". By effectively utilizing these features, you can significantly enhance the convenience and efficiency of data management. If you're interested in exploring more Excel tips and tricks, our website offers thousands of tutorials.

More drop-down list operations:

Drop down list - Multi-selection
By default, a drop-down list cell only allows selecting an item per time. In many cases, you may need to select multiple items from a drop-down list, here we provide a VBA method in details for you to easily create drop-down list with multiple selections in Excel. Click to know more...

Drop down list - Auto complete
Normally, you can only select an item from the drop-down list or typing the entire data into the drop-down list cell. If there is a long drop-down list, it's not easy for you to find the accurate item in the list. Do you want to complete the value automatically when typing the first letter only? Click to know more...

Drop down list - With checkboxes
Create drop-down list with checkboxes helps you selecting multiple items at the same time in a drop-down list. However, it seems hard to achieve, here we provide detailed steps to help you easily get it done. Click to know more...

Create Dynamic Drop-down List
Supposing there are two drop-down lists A and B in your worksheet, when you choose a value in drop-down list A, the values in drop-down list B will be updated automatically based on the selection in A. Here we provide detailed steps to help you easily create dynamic drop-down list with the Data Validation feature and the INDIRECT function. Click to know more...