Data Validation: Lists
For each cell, you can define in advance what type of contents is valid for that cell. This allows you to guide users through data entry in OpenOffice.org Calc by restricting cells to receive specific values and ranges.
In this tutorial, we will see how to restrict the value of a cell or range of cells to a specified list.
In the example below, we would like to restrict the values of two fields - State and Sex.
First select the column with the State values. Invoke the Validity dialog with Data - Validity as shown below.
There are three tabs in the Validity dialog. First, we define the criteria to be applied to the selected cells.
By default, all values are allowed. We will define a list which will be displayed when the user selects the cell for input.
Because the list of valid states will be displayed from which the user can choose, we can dispense with an input help message. The Error Alert tab allows us to define an error message/action to be generated if erroneous value is inputted.
We click OK to exit the Validity dialog. We are now ready to see how effective this feature is in validating the data being input in the table.
As you can see, selecting a cell in the state column results now in a drop-down list from which the user selects the desired value.
We can also define other lists where desired/required - for example the Sex column - as shown below.
