In an Excel db of businesses addresses, need a tool where I type a state & get a list of all in said state.?

Question

The db is of businesses and their addresses. I need to create a tool, possibly a worksheet in same file, with a dropdown of all states. When I click a state, a list will pop up of all businesses in that state. I can't just use Data/Filter, needs to be very user friendly. And would like it to be where user can't possibly corrupt the source data.

Answer 1

Oddly enough, I have built sheets that do exactly what you want but with different data sets. My latest version has four different "pull downs" that subsequently cause the displayed records to change. The data set is scheduled flight departures and the four "pull downs" are origin, destination, Via and weekday.

Basically it is one dataset with multiple views in a single display. For example, there are over 200 possible destinations. So the user can choose LON (London) and then see only those departures for LON.

Its very easy for a user but its not easy to code the formulas unless you're very experienced. In my situation the dataset is updated monthly which also complicates things. I'm not trying scare you off, just prepare you for the complexity. Oh and I must tell you, there are no macros, only formulas.

I can provide you a working copy without password protection so you can see how it works. Just send me your email address and a link to this question so I know which one to provide.

Hope this helps,

Kind Regards,
QwertyKPH @ Yahoo

Answer 2

Your best bet would be to use a piviot table. This way you can establish a drop down menu for each collum so they can chose to see one, some, or all of the contents based on a cirtain collum. To keep them from corrupting the source you would either need to save a back up (I recomend anyway) or password protect the file so that they can only have a read only copy and not make any changes.