IF formul, text, dropdown menu

Hi!

I really hope you guys can help me with this one. It will save a lot of time, once we've figured this out.

I am working on a spreadsheet with dropdown menu's (data validation).
Let's say i can choose from 3 options here.
1: 'ex'
2: 'am'
3: 'ple'
I will select option 1. Then I would like Excel to follow up on the selected option in the second field.
Let's say:
If A1 is 'ex', A2 should be 'so'
If A1 is 'am', A2 should be 'lu'
If A2 is 'ple', A2 should be 'tion'

Thanks in advance for sharing your Excel-knowledge.

Cheers,
Happymonkey

You could use a VLOOKUP:

=VLOOKUP(A1,X1:Y3,2,0)

X1:Y3 is table with "drop down codes in X and corresponding value in Y


"Ex"/"So"
"am"/"Lu"
"ple"/"tion"

Try this:

=INDEX({"so","lu","tion"},MATCH(A1,{"ex","am","ple"},0))