Do you want to create a dynamic dependent drop down list in Excel like below? You can use XLOOKUP and data validation to set this up quickly. It is fully dynamic and works across a full column too.
Steps to Create Multiple Dependent Dropdown List in Excel
Dependent or cascading dropdowns are a valuable way to make your workbooks error free and improve the user experience. Follow these steps to set them up.
Step 1: Set up your validation list data.
In a blank area of your workbook, set up the data validation lists. If you have just two-levels, use the structure as depicted below.
If you have 3 or more levels, just set up the first two-levels as shown above. Then for each additional level, create a structure like above.
Step 2: Create Data Validation Rules for the Drop-downs
Now, you will need to create data validation rules for each of the levels.
For the main or first category,
- Select the entire column of cells
- Go to Data ? Data Validation
- Change the validation type to “List”
- Specify Source as the range of cells containing the main or first category.
For the next category items
The process for all these other items is same. We are going to use XLOOKUP function, which can return multiple values for the search criteria.
Related: Learn more about XLOOKUP function in Excel.
- Select the entire column
- Make a note of the first cell of previous column. In this case, that is D5.
- Go to Data ? Data Validation
- Set the rule type as “List”
- For source, write the XLOOKUP formula with below pattern.
=XLOOKUP(SELECTED_CATEGORY, CATEGORY_NAMES, SUB-CATEGORY_NAMES)For example, in my case, selected category is in D5, category names are in J4:N4 and product names are in J5:N15. So my XLOOKUP formula looks like this.
=XLOOKUP(D5, $J$4:$N$4, $J$5:$N$15)Refer to below illustration to understand how these rules work.
Step 3: Using the Dependent Drop Downs
Now that you have set up both main category and sub-category (or product) level rules, you can start to use the data validation drop downs like below.
- Select a category in the first column.
- When you go to the next column, you will see all the sub-category items there.
- Pick a selection from the list.
- Go back to first column to add a new item.
How does this work? – The details
This key ingredient of this Dependent Drop-down technique is XLOOKUP. Previously, I’ve used INDIRECT formula with pre-defined names or even OFFSET formulas. But now that XLOOKUP returns the full range of values, we can simplify the process.
Here is how this works:
- When you select a category in D5, the data validation rule runs the XLOOKUP formula to get the matching values for that category in the range J4:N4.
- Then, as the return value for XLOOKUP is the range J5:N15, it returns the rows (or product names) corresponding to selected category.
- For example, if you picked “Bites” category in D5, then XLOOKUP will return the product values for Bites category – ie the range K5:K15
- This list is then fed to the data validation drop-down.
But what about all the blank values at the end…?
Excel 365 automatically removes any duplicate items in the data validation list. So it would remove all the blank cells and replace them with a single blank value.
Works with 3 Levels too…
The beauty of XLOOKUP based approach is, your formulas and data set up are exactly same even if you need 3 levels or 4 levels or even more. Here is a demo of how my drop-downs work when used with 3 levels (in a table).
Video Instruction: Dependent Dropdown Lists in Excel
I made a video explaining how to create such a dependent drop down list in Excel. You will also see how the XLOOKUP really works. Watch the video below or on my channel.
?Sample File – Excel Dependent Drop Down Validation
Please grab my sample workbook with all the formulas for both two-level and three-level scenarios. Refer to the data validation rules to understand the formula syntax.
Click here to download the workbook.
Limitations of this approach for cascading dropdowns
- Compatibility: The biggest limitation of this technique is you need Excel 365 or 2019+. So if you are your clients use an older version of Excel, you can’t rely on this technique. You can still use the OFFSET formula based approach we discussed here.
- You need to set up formulas: If you are not familiar with Excel formulas, this technique will be hard for you. Fortunately the formulas themselves are not that complex.
More ways to create Dependent Drop-downs in Excel
If you want to make dependent drop-downs using another way, check below resources:
- Cascading Drop-downs in Excel – using INDEX & COUNTA functions
- Multi-level option for older versions of Excel
- Using INDIRECT and named ranges [Contextures]
Alternatives to Dependent Drop-down Lists
You can use a two-level data validation list instead. These are easy to setup and don’t require any complex formulas.
19 Responses to “How to Distribute Players Between Teams – Evenly”
An excellent solution, especially for large data sets.
Another solution without using solver would be to assign the player with the highest score to Team 1, the 2nd to team 2, 3rd to team 3, 4th to team 3, 5th to team 2, 6th to team 1, 7th to team 1 and it continues. This method would end up with a Std Dev of 0.001247219. This works best with a distribution with lower Std Dev for the dataset.
Full Disclosure: this is not my idea, remember reading something a few years ago. Think it may have been Ozgrid
thinking back I now remember why I read about it. About 10 years back I had to distribute around 300 team members into 25-30 odd teams. Used this method based on their performance scores. I used the method I described to do this and the distribution was pretty fair.
Solver would have saved me a ton of time though 🙂
I think the issue with you first Solver approach was that you took the absolute value of the sum of team deviations (which should always be zero except for rounding) instead of the sum of the absolute values (which is a reasonable measure of how unbalanced the teams are).
Here's another simple algorithm you could use: you start from the top (with players sorted from high to low), and at each step allocate the next player to whichever team has the smallest total so far. You can implement it dynamically with some formulas so it will update automatically when the data changes.
If the scores were more widely distributed (so that this might end up with not all teams the same size), you could add a constraint to only pick among the teams which currently have fewest players at each step, or just stop adding to any team when it hits its quota.
When I tried it on the sample, I got the three teams below, with a STDEV of 0.000942809 (i.e. about half of what Solver got to).
Team 1: John, Hugo, Tom, Josh, Eric, Zane, Charles, Andrew
Team 2: Barry, Michael, Kenny, Joe, Xavier, Patrick, Oliver, William
Team 3: Henry, Steven, Ben, Frank, Kyle, Edward, Cameron, Lachlan
Thanks for sharing!
Hi,
I was looking at all the solutions and this is closest to what I intended to do. I am dividing a bunch of players into 3 soccer teams. Players availability is also a factor while deciding the teams.
So the steps the excel needs to do is as follows:
1) In availability column if "yes" go to next
2) Equally divide 'Goalkeepers', 'Strikers', 'Defenders' basis their quality
So the end result gives each 3 teams a balance of players playing at different positions.
Can this be done on Google spreadsheet with only availability as an input from the user and rest calculates by itself.
Sorry for asking such a pointed question, but I have been struggling to find a solution for it for sometime now!
Hi Ishaan,
I am working on a similar problem at the moment, so I am wondering if you ever found a solution and if you are willing to share what you did.
Hi everyone, this is a variation of the famous Knapsack Problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem.
I had to use a VBA implementation recently as part of a problem, where we ar trying to allocate teams of an organization into different locations (we are a large company with many different team). The goal was to optimally allocate teams to individual buildings without putting too many teams into one building and not splitting teams apart.
As we had around 400 teams of different sizes, solver couldn't handle it anymore. Luckily there is a Knapsack algorithm implementation in VBA readily available on the internet :).
I also went with a heuristic approach first!
An interesting mathematical solution but what if Eric and Xavier can't stand each other or Patrick is best friends with Steven - the real life problems that effect "even" teams.
@Joe
You can add more criteria like
If Eric and Xavier can't stand each other
=OR(AND(E15=1,E16=1),AND(F15=1,F16=1),AND(G15=1,G16=1))
It must be False
If Patrick is best friends with Steven
=OR(AND(E5=1,E17=1),AND(F5=1,F17=1),AND(G5=1,G17=1))
It must be True
Note that the 2 formulas above are exactly the same
except for the ranges
One must be True = Friends
One must be False = Not Friends
Nice Post!
Just one question What if number of players are not even or equally divisible.
Nice post Hui!
I download your workbook and just try to change in options the Precision Restriction from 10E-6 to 10-8 and the Convergence from 10E-4 to 10E-10. The process take almost the same time, but the results was great.
The standard deviation I got was 0,000471.
Team 1: John, Tom, Kenny, Frank, Eric, Xavier, Edward, Zane
Team 2: Steven, Hugo, Ben, Joe, Josh, Oliver, Cameron, William
Team 3: Barry, Henry, Michael, Kyle, Patrick, Charles, Andrew, Lachlan
Great application of Solver! Thanks for the link!
Great explanation. Well done... However, I tried with 6 teams of 4 players and solver never did finish.
How about vba code for the same data set.
I have 3 column A B C wherein A has text and B has number Wherein C is blank. And in C1 been the header C2 where I want the name to come evenly distributed the number which is in Column B.
My Lastcolumn is 1000.
Sorry if I'm being slow here, but how is 'Team Score' calculated? I've gone through the explanation several times but it seems to just appear.
@Hrmft
This process uses the Solver Excel addin
Solver is effectively taking the model and trying different solutions until it gets a solution that meets all the criteria
Then solver puts the solution into the cell and moves to the next cell
So yes it appears to "just appear"
Hi ! Thank you so much ! Works great 🙂
I cannot get the fourth Equation to work in my excel spreadsheet
You have =($E$2:$G$25=0)+($E$2:$G$25=1)=1 as a SUMIF solution, I have, =($F$2:$H$13=0)+($F$2:$H$13=1)=1 as my solution but it does not work. The only thing I changed is the ranges. Any suggestions?
Thank you.
Jim
I cannot get the fourth Equation of TURE or FALSE statements to work in my excel spreadsheet You have =($E$2:$G$25=0)+($E$2:$G$25=1)=1 as a SUMIF solution, I have, =($F$2:$H$13=0)+($F$2:$H$13=1)=1 as my solution but it does not work. The only thing I changed is the ranges. Any suggestions?
Sorry I left some of it out in the previous question,
Thank you. Jim