Make Awesome Data Entry Forms by using Conditional Formatting + Data Validation

Share

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Last week we saw a really cool holiday request form made by Theodor.

This week, we will learn how to combine conditional formatting and data validation to create an awesome data entry form.

First see a demo to understand what I mean:

Data Entry forms with Conditional Formatting & Data Validation - Demo

How to create such a data entry form?

Very simple, just grab a cup of coffee (or your favorite fried-nuts-crushed-and-brewed-with-hot-water) and follow my lead.

Step 1: Set up Data Validation

Assuming you need to gather some inputs, like shown above. First thing to do would be setting up data validation rules in a cell so that your users can specify the type of data they are entering. For eg. they can choose card or paypal or other as payment mode and depending on that, enter further details.

To do this, just select the cell and go to Data > Validation. Choose “List” as the rule and give values.

Data Validation Criteria for our form

Step 2: Add conditional formatting rules.

Now, based on the selected value, we need to highlight a set of cells.

Assuming all the data to be gathered in cells C4:G4,

Select first two cells (C4:D4), go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule

Here, we need to tell Excel to highlight the C4 and D4 if the type of payment is Card.

So choose the CF rule type as “Use a formula to determine which cells to format” and the check if $B4 is “card”.

Conditional Formatting Rules to highlight cells based on payment mode

Tip: We need to use $B4 since we want Excel to check column B even if we are applying formatting to C4 or D4. Read more.

Step 3: Add Conditional Formatting rules to other cells (E4:F4, G4)

Using the same logic.

Step 4: Bask in glory!

That is all. There is no step 4. We are done. Finish the coffee or whatever you mixed with hot water. Just save the file and send it to your customer, vendor or boss. Bask in glory as there will be fewer data entry mistakes and more awesome.

Home work: Get Creative and do more

You can use some creativity and make the data entry form even more awesome. For example, you could show a tick mark when the data entry is complete. Also you could highlight only when the cell is blank (ie if the data is already entered, there is no point highlighting)

See what I came up with:

Data Entry form - Advanced Example

I am not going to tell you how to do the above. That is for you to figure out.

Download Excel Files

Click here to download the excel file with the data entry form example. Play with it to understand how to make similar forms. Become awesome!

And if you can not solve the homework problem, download this file and examine it.

How do you make your data entry forms awesome?

I love data validation. It makes the whole process of gathering valid data dead simple. Also, it is an excellent way to change month or other settings in dashboards. (example 1, 2, 3)

What about you? How do you use Data Validation and other excel features to make your input forms both simple and awesome? Please share your experiences and ideas using comments. Go!

Learn More About Data Validation & Conditional Formatting:

As I said earlier, I really love data validation, conditional formatting features of Excel. They are quite powerful and very useful when working with lots of data. We have very good information about these features on chandoo.org. Start with the below articles to learn more.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Share this tip with your colleagues

Excel and Power BI tips - Chandoo.org Newsletter

Get FREE Excel + Power BI Tips

Simple, fun and useful emails, once per week.

Learn & be awesome.

Welcome to Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel, Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME.

Read my storyFREE Excel tips book

Overall I learned a lot and I thought you did a great job of explaining how to do things. This will definitely elevate my reporting in the future.
Rebekah S
Reporting Analyst
Excel formula list - 100+ examples and howto guide for you

From simple to complex, there is a formula for every occasion. Check out the list now.

Calendars, invoices, trackers and much more. All free, fun and fantastic.

Advanced Pivot Table tricks

Power Query, Data model, DAX, Filters, Slicers, Conditional formats and beautiful charts. It's all here.

Still on fence about Power BI? In this getting started guide, learn what is Power BI, how to get it and how to create your first report from scratch.

24 Responses to “10 Supercool UI Improvements in Excel 2010”

  1. Hui... says:

    The best improvement by far is the Collapse Ribbon ^ button !

  2. Alex Kerin says:

    Kind of a shame that some of the best improvements are actually returns to old functionality. One thing I don't like is that to get to recent files I need to do an extra click after File - apart from Save As, that's why I'm usually in the File menu. I like the sparkline options, though they are still as not fully featured as some of the free and pay options out there.

  3. Arti says:

    The collapse button for the ribbon menu is good news. Can you make the ribbon menus stick too?

  4. Jon Peltier says:

    Nine improvements, not ten. You can also select multiple objects in 2007. Click on the Find & Select item at the far right of the Home tab, and the dropdown looks remarkably like your 2010 screenshot.

  5. Chandoo says:

    @Jon.. Thank you. Dumb me, I somehow thought we couldnt select objects in Excel 2007. Just saw the "select menu" and it is there. I have corrected the post and removed the point. I have added the "you can make your own ribbons" instead. Thanks once again.

    @Arti: what do you mean by make ribbons stick?

    @Alex: May be it is my installation, but when I go to "File menu" I see "recent files" by default.

  6. Arti says:

    For example, if I am working with one of the contextual ribbon menus (Pivot tables, Drawing/Chart etc), as soon as I click away from the selected object, the menu tabs vanish. If I click on the object again immediately, then Excel will remember what I was looking at, but if I wander away and click on a Pivot, then back again on the Chart, the menus will 'appear' but not get activated, thereby causing much annoyance and additional clicking.

    I want to "pin" the whole menu (not invididual commands) somehow, so that I can have the menu there for the length of the time I am working with graphics. Excel 2003 used to have the Drawing toolbar you could detach and hover while you were working, but this functionality disappeared in Excel 2007.

    My thought was Excel should just allow a 'pin', similar to the Recently Opened files menu, for the Ribbon Menus as well. If I have not selected any Drawing object, the commands can be greyed out, but I want the menu as a whole to 'stick'.

  7. Chandoo says:

    @Arti... I think MS solved this problem differently. When I select a pivot and go to "design" tab Excel 2010 remembers this and automatically takes me to "design" tab when I reselect the pivot.

    Apart from this you can also define your own ribbon with all the things you normally do. See the above article (I have added this after Jon's comments)

  8. Stephen says:

    Nice feature. About time for a upgrade for MS Office

  9. Arti says:

    Oh... okay. That might be a start. I'd probably just copy-paste the Drawing tab haha. Thanks. I'll definitely give Excel 2010 a try.

    Btw - have you considered getting into / gotten into the world of Excel as it meets SharePoint?

  10. Jon Peltier says:

    Actually, the replacement new thing is probably better than all the rest. One thing that the designers of the Office 2007 ignored was allowing regular users to customize their own interface. Office 2010's interface was expanded in this way to address the huge uproar.

  11. jeff weir says:

    Is there still a limit on how many things you can add to the QAT bar? (I'm too lazy to look myself.)

  12. Chandoo says:

    @Jeff.. it seems to take quite a few, but only shows one line and gives a little arrow button at the end. (summary: shucks!)

  13. Squiggler says:

    The best thing is you can edit the ribbon directly from excel, so now i can create my own bar with just the things I use regularly!

  14. John says:

    One of the annoying things in 07 for me is the Add-Ins menu bar - in 03 I could keystroke directly to menu add ins.. In 07 I needed an extra keystroke just to activate the add-in menu, then the keystrokes as normal.. Hope this marek sense..

  15. Jon Peltier says:

    John -
     
    If you remember the old Excel 2003 Alt-key shortcuts, you can still use them in 2007. To get to the Add-In dialog:
     
    Alt-T-I

  16. Gagan says:

    Dear Arti & Chandoo

    Seen your comments over some issues. Hope you are form India, gone through your comment expecting a pin to command it as a whole, great, hope if someone out of MS have read it, it may be kept in mind while the next R & D of Office Ver. 16

  17. Loranga says:

    Just incase someone forgot CTRL+F1 will collapse the ribbon.

  18. [...] was pleasantly surprised when I ran Microsoft Excel 2010 for first time. It felt smooth, fast, responsive and looked great on my [...]

  19. DK Samuel says:

    I like the sparklines, and the ability to modify the charts

  20. CHRIS LUNA says:

    How do you get rid of the advertisment on the right hand side? If you upgrade then will it take off the ads?

  21. Derek says:

    Once again Microsoft has re-decorated the Office and we are NOT pleased!

    The graphics object selector can be found in the Home ribbon under Find & Select, Select Objects near the bottom of the drop down. You can make it part of the Quick Access toolbar by right click over it and selecting Add to Quick Access toolbar.

    The graphics "cursor" will now appear on the mini-toolbar at the top left of the window.

  22. Vladimir says:

    How to get rid of "Add-Ins" button in Backstage (File)" menu by means of XML code, i.e. to hide, to delete or to disable this button?

    This button is usually situated in the Backstage menu between "Help" and "Options" buttons.

    • Pete Kies says:

      Vladimir, did you ever get an answer to your question?

      I am tying to customize the ribbon UI for a file using XML, and this is precisely the piece I can't figure out. I can hide other tabs, remove items from QAT and backstage - all except the options that are showing up under add-ins in backstage. If there is an XML syntax for referencing this thing and making it invisible, I cannot find it.

  23. Bishnu says:

    Hey, nice tutorial. Please check my video tutorial on similar topic at the below link and provide your comments:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIFc0jYjpA

Leave a Reply