Excel 2010/2007 - How much can be done with Custom Validation?

[bartt.shelton]

Excel 2010/2007

(Posting to programming group because my instincts tell me code would be required...)

I implement a rather robust application that uses a large footprint of reference data. Experience has shown that during an implementation, it’s fareasier for the client to review the reference data in a spreadsheet formatand then upload en-masse. The data has to adhere to validation that resides in the app GUI.

We’ve got a utility to upload the spreadsheet, but it doesn’t currentlyinclude any validation. As a result, the utility spits out errors that have to be reviewed & re-processed.

Some of that error/review/reprocess could be reduced if I can add at least some validation to the spreadsheet.

Custom Validation can easily do things like checking for duplicates, but there are some more sophisticated validation schemes that I’d like to employ. I don’t know whether they’re possible w/ pure Excel Custom Validation or whether they’d require VBA.

e.g. say I’ve captured a Location list:

State City
CA San Diego
NY New York
FL Miami
CA San Francisco
CA Los Angeles
FL Jacksonville

Next, consider that I’ve moved on to contacts/people in a different set of the ref data capture & need to specify an address.

Is there a way to employ custom validation (without VBA because I don’t want to have to support VBA code in addition to app code) that would allow auser to select a State in cell A2 of the user sheet (e.g. “CA”) which in turn limits my validation list for the contact's city to only those Cities from the selected state? e.g. on contact sheet, for "State" user selects “CA” & the selection list in contact sheet for "City" becomes “San Diego”, “San Francisco”, & “Los Angeles”.

Initially, the State/City list wouldn’t be sorted, but that’s a simple enough exercise that I could justify a simple macro to do it.

 

[Gord]

Sounds like dependent Validation lists.

See Debra Dalgeish's site for help.

http://www.contextures.on.ca/xlDataVal02.html


Gord Dibben Microsoft Excel MVP

 

[Bartt]

Sounds like dependent Validation lists.

See Debra Dalgeish's site for help.

http://www.contextures.on.ca/xlDataVal02.html

Gord Dibben    Microsoft Excel MVP













- Show quoted text -

Well, not exactly. Debra's approach requires static lists behind each
piece of the validation. I need a dynamic list that "adjusts" as
users enter additional information. To do what I'm talking about with
that approach, I'd have to write code that would parse each line as
the user entered it, determine which state it was in, then append it
to that state's list of cities.

I'm looking more for a way to do something like:
select StateCity.City from StateCity where StateCity.State = "CA"

i.e. one master list that includes a blend of all States & Cities.

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

(Posting to programming group because my instincts tell me code would be required...)

I think your instincts are correct.

Your "raw" list includes duplicate state abbreviations, which is not ideal for selecting the state from a drop-down.

You could do this with multiple lists, where selecting the second list is dependent on the first list, but in subsequent posts it doesn't sound as if you want to do that.

The only other option I am aware of would have you generate unique validation lists "on the fly" and that would require VBA.

 

[Gord]

Debra's approach requires static lists behind each

piece of the validation.

Well, not exactly............

I guess you missed the section on creating Dynamic Lists.

Try also http://www.contextures.on.ca/xlDataVal13.html

or http://www.contextures.on.ca/xlDataVal15.html


Gord

 

[Bartt]

Well, not exactly............

I guess you missed the section on creating Dynamic Lists.

Try alsohttp://www.contextures.on.ca/xlDataVal13.html

or    http://www.contextures.on.ca/xlDataVal15.html

Gord

I did, indeed.

On second pass, I'm still not SURE it's what I'm looking for, but I've
at least got something on which to proceed until the next obstacle.
It depends on whether I can, in fact, sort the various lists.

 

[Gord]

I'm sure you can find some combination of methods from Debra's DV
pages that will work.

Go to her Excel home site and browse through the extensive DV section.

Try downloading a few of her files to get a better visual idea of how
they operate on dependent, dynamic, sorted lists.

Maybe even using a ComboBox to allow autocomplete.


Good luck, Gord

 

[Kris]

I'm sure you can find some combination of methods from Debra's DV
pages that will work.

Go to her Excel home site and browse through the extensive DV section.

Try downloading a few of her files to get a better visual idea of how
they operate on dependent, dynamic, sorted lists.

Maybe even using a ComboBox to allow autocomplete.

Good luck,                       Gord

This link has both the option (VBA + Formula)

http://www.excelfox.com/forum/showthread.php?111-Dependent-Data-Validation-(Using-Only-Formulas)