? and no, not in the dance floor way

Have you ever had a form with blanks to fill out… and you send it to someone and their answer for Favorite Color is “Pink.. no, blue – but blue with glitter! Actually, I don’t know, I don’t have a favorite!” and you’re just like…. WHY!? Okay, not gonna lie, I have totally done this – choosing my favorite color is SO hard and I can’t help but embellish my description of the blue that IS the wave on a beach as the sun is doing something in the sky ?? *gasp* *magical*.
In as much seriousness as I can muster, while on day #28973 of social-distancing in my apartment – when you need to gather information to run analysis, these types of responses can be frustrating. You want your data from all of your respondents to be clean and comparable so you can do whatever it is you wanna do with that info.
✏️ Here’s our Data Hack to keep those long winded and off-topic responses off your spreadsheet! ✏️
Step by Step:
- Create a list for your drop down (on another tab you can hide).*
- Select the cell to place your drop-down menu
- Click the ‘DATA’ tab (our personal fav)
- Select “Data Validation” within Data Tools
- In the pop-up, for the Validation criteria, click the drop down arrow and select “List”
- For the Source: select within the box to activate the formula. Next, select your list you want to show (from Step 1).
- Select “OK”
*Note – items will appear in the drop-down menu in the same order that you list them
“Yes I want info, but not that… or that… ugh NVM, just pick one of these”
– Drop-Down Queen

DOWNLOAD FULL FORM HERE
^Download our form and play around! Try entering ‘wrong’ answers and see what happens ;). You can even replace items listed on the 2nd tab and watch how the drop-downs automatically update!
Drop-Down Success!
Now you can make a group Quarantine spreadsheet without anyone getting confused and you get to stay organized! Have any additional questions about a data hack? Feel free to email us athello@dumbblondedata.comand we will work hard to help you!
