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divingdingo
11-29-2007, 04:57 AM
can anyone suggest somewhere i can find help and information regarding the use of drop down lists?

i want to make my spreadsheet more user friendly so want to populate it with a few drop down menus and buttons (shapes)

initially i want a drop down list that has all my different workbooks i have and by choosing the selection in the list loads up that workbook.

i'm presuming i have to declare a variable as string which is equal to the selection of the drop down. then on selection load up the path to the file that the selection represents.

i'm sure this has been asked before or can be found on the internet but i'm not sure where to encounter the info.

thanks for the help in advance

regs
mark

unmarkedhelicopter
11-29-2007, 06:15 AM
Sorry, you are asking a lot of quite basic questions and they are all over Excel and Excel_VBA. Have you thought about buying and reading a book ? A lot of these questions would be covered and further it would tell you how to find things out for yourself. We don't mind answering the questions but it seems obvious that you haven't even searched this forum for similar past answers.

divingdingo
11-29-2007, 07:32 AM
i do have a book...it's excel vba for dummies, unfortunately it's not that specific....

my problem is that i have no background in programming at all and i'm on a steep learning curve, most of the time i know what i want to do logically but i have no idea what syntax to use which doesn't help when trying to find the answers in excel help

i understand there must be a limit to the advice people want to offer. and i would hate to become a nuiscence. i will go off and search the available sources.

i am a beginner and i'm absorbing and learning as much as i can as quickly as i can.

regards

mark

rory
11-29-2007, 07:52 AM
Mark,
Are you planning to have a master workbook where all these dropdowns will reside? If so, have you thought about using an add-in and creating menu bars rather than putting dropdowns onto a worksheet?

divingdingo
11-29-2007, 08:28 AM
i've got lots of data to analyse over the next few months and i thought if i could automate it then it could help me out, plus i was hoping to hone my vba skills at the same time. (they were non-existent two weeks ago!) i read about add-ins in the book i've got but they seemed very advanced at this stage... you are right though the idea was to have a master wookbook and pull info into it from my data files

i'll go and look into add-ins

cheers rory.

rory
11-29-2007, 09:14 AM
If you are planning to have a visible master workbook, then you may be as well to stick with putting dropdowns on a worksheet there (if only for the time being). You can use Data Validation to create the lists, then use the Worksheet_Change event to open the selected file.