Excel Drop Down Button

Septus

I'm trying to figure out how to create a button in excel, that will show a drop down list of categories that will hide everything but the row(or rows, if one category has multiple rows of information below it) upon selecting it.

I've tried going to the form toolbar and creating a combo box, but it gives me problems generating the list, when my input field, my far left column of categories, with multiple blank rows between each category, so that the box's list also has multiple spaces. However, even if I'm creating a box for 5 rows, without any blanks, it just shows me the list, I don't know how to make it hide everything but the item I select from the list.

Is anyone familiar with these?

Imageshack is being very slow, but this is an example of what I'm talking about.

focused7

I don't think they used a combobox for those. Looks like they used the data validation method.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP052022151033.aspx

Septus

Hmm, that lets me put a box into a cell, and choosing from the drop down list generated by my list of categories, and upon choosing from the list, replace the text in the cell that contains the drop down box, with what I selected. I don't want the cell where the box is located to change, I want it to modify the rows below it, so that upon selecting from the list, all of the rows below are hidden except for the one that I select, and I see no option under validation relating to hiding or only showing the selected choice.

focused7

Sorry I misunderstood a bit. Autofilters may be more what your looking for.

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/smallbusiness/products/howto/use-excel-filtering-to-find-data-fast.mspx

Septus

Hah, that was simple, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Now, I've got the issue of column A having all of my big categories, and each category having, say, 10 rows of numbers in columns B, C etc, so that when I filter column A, I'm only getting one line shown from the columns to the right.

After looking at that link you posted, I'm thinking that my only solution is to repeat the name of that category, down column A, for every row of information pertaining to it.