Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Need Excel help

There seem to be some real Excel Gurus here so I thought I'm hoping to take advantage. I spent a couple of hours trying to get the various (and all different) samples I've found on the Internet going, but no luck.

Here goes.
Excel 2010
I have a 'Master Projects list" table with two columns that I need to refer back to on several other worksheets. To keep it simple, I'll use "Customer" and "Projects" as the column headers in this example. I have given each column a [defined name] matching the above. For example (and ignore the dots)....

Customer........Projects
DAU Ltd.........Managed Firewall
DAU Ltd.........BID Internet
Grover & Co....Study super powers

On another worksheet, I want to create, say a To-do List, where I can fill in the columns via dropdown lists using [data validation] from the above columns.

Here I will have
Customer......Project.......Task

To enter a new task I will pick a blank row, click in the Customer column and be presented with a dropdown list of all customers based on the list from the first sheet.

HERE IS WHERE I NEED HELP.
Then I would click on the Projects column and I wish to also have a dropdown list but I wish to be presented with only the projects that are associated with my choice in the customer column.

I know how to use [Validate Data] to create a dropdown list but I can not figure out the formula to use in the
'Source" field that will limit the drop down list based on the previous cell.

For the sake of simplicity, lets say all this exists on the same worksheet. I can add the worksheet names in later once I get it working on the same page.

Thanks any and all who can help!

I found this page, which seems to lay it all out pretty well.

http://www.get-digital-help.com/2010/07/...alues-in-excel/

EDIT: I just tried this myself and it worked, but only for one instance of first drop-down. Hmmm....

Thanks Peter!!! Very much appreciated.

I didn't get it working on my first try but there are so many opportunities for syntax errors that I will have to try again after work when I have more time to concentrate.

Hurry up! I'm dying to hear The Answer.

I found a much better tutorial that makes it a lot simpler. The secret, it seems, is using the '=INDIRECT' function when defining the dependent drop-down lists.

http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-excel/archive/2009/11/24/create-conditional-drop-down-lists.aspx

Here's one I liked and am using.

http://www.contextures.com/xlDataVal13.html

BUT - I need more help.

I have a table of available values with columns for name and ID

Name - ID
Joe Smith 1234567890
Suzy Jones 2234567890
etc.

I want a user to be able to select the NAME in the drop down, but at the same time I want the ID to also populate in another column of the same row.

I WAS putting the name in the validated drop-down cell and then going back to search for the ID based on name, but that won't work 100% because names aren't unique.

I also thought of just concatenating the Name and ID and putting them in the same field.

I don't really do VBA, but I'm fearless with formulas.

Any ideas?