adding a large, LARGE amount of text to a spreadsheet

Hello everyone,

I have a question that I am hoping someone can help me with. I work for a department that has massive lists that need to be accessed quickly. The problem is, the creator of the list either is not savvy or didn't have the time to make them into a working and easy to use excel spreadsheet. In an attempt to make life easier, I have been working on this at night to create a more user friendly document that will cut down on errors. So far, I have converted everything into dropdown boxes using the data validation tool, and have tied relevant data to the dropdown box using the VLOOKUP tool. However, I have no run into a snag that I need help with.

The lists that I am making have a "Scenario" with each line. As an example, the list has a title (ie. "Drilled Well") There is a lengthy scenario that goes along with selecting this title, and I want to show the entire scenario in a block. If the "Drilled Well" practice is selected then this long scenario automatically populates a group of cells.

So far I have tried to use the VLOOKUP option to populate this by copying the entire scenario and adding it to a cell. This works, however instead of getting multiple paragraphs, I get one very long line that does not fit into my merged cell blocks on the primary page. I am not sure if I am explaining this well, but I really want to know how to make a massive paragraph fit into a merged cell block, using VLOOKUP. Any help is appreciated.

John

Thank you Richard and newdoverman. It is critical that the scenario show up on the excel sheet and is tied to a practice. The challenge is that there 97 codes and over 200 practices with individual scenarios (it is a tangled mess, that in true government fashion is all ad hoc). I will look at making some changes based on your suggestions and see if this helps. Thank you so much for your help. I know that Excel is not a word program, but in this case I am hoping to blend the two to reduce confusion. Thank you both again for your prompt help, I will try the suggestions out and see if they work. Thanks again.

John

Richard, thank you so much. your suggestion has helped me create a usable and professional document. Thanks again.