I have searched the internet high and low and I can’t even figure out the name of the feature I’m trying to replicate. When using Excel, if you have selected a cell that is in a “dataset” or even just a single column that contains data, you can hold Alt and hit the Down Arrow Key to see a list of all the other unique data entries in cells in that column. This is NOT the same as holding alt + down on a filter and seeing the filter menu, NOR the same as holding alt + down to see the list of options in a defined dropdown menu. It does create a dropdown menu of sorts, but Excel automatically displays it when you simply alt + down.
My question is, does this exist in Google Sheets??? Obviously alt + down switches tab, and I can’t even find a name for the feature I’m looking for even in Excel. If anyone can either the name of the shortcut in Excel and/or its equivalent (or lack thereof), I would be most grateful! I have a column in my transactions tab for tags, and it would be much easier to be able to alt + down to see the list of options I’ve already entered than typing it out or filtering and then copy pasting.
Hi @Zachary - the thing you’re referring to in Excel is a pretty cool feature that I believe is just considered part of Excel’s “Data Validation”. It’s more automatic than in Google Sheets. So while it doesn’t work exactly the same in Google Sheets where you can just use Alt+down arrow (Option+down arrow on Mac) out of the box, Google Sheets does also have a pretty good data validation in my opinion, but you have to take an extra step to enable it. So for example you can highlight your entire Tags column in the Transactions sheet and go to the menu path Data–>Data validation. Choose “New Rule” and it should immediately pick up all the entries in the column and pre-populate the criteria type as Dropdown with those values that it detected.
If you don’t prefer the default chip style, you can change that in the Advanced options menu before selecting Done to finish. You can also decide to just warn or reject a non-matching entry. It’s easy to add a new entry by clicking the pencil from within a cell. You can also create a Tags list somewhere else that you can then reference using the Criteria “Dropdown from a Range”. The interesting thing about that is you can sort and order the list however you want and the validation will automatically adjust.