How to pull from a sample set?

I know this is possible, but don't know the exact terminology or how to do it. This is for a box office project that I know could be more efficient. As of now for every single show we are typing in every single name on the reservation list (even though it's the same set of 200 people in the theatre department for every show)

Basically, I have a long set of names from a Box Office list. What I want to do is "pull" from that list for a particular evening's show.

For example, for the show on 1-15-07 in row 1 cell 1, if I start typing "John Smith" it will auto-suggest "John Smith" by the time I get to "Jo."

Here's the kicker: I also need to be able to add new names. They don't have to go into the "sample set." But they have to be entered if needed - I can't be limited to ONLY the names in the sample set.

Sorry if this is hard to understand - I'm trying to describe what I need clearly. If you need clarification let me know!

Possible alternative???

Set up a sheet with
an alphabetized list of the names down the left column
and show dates across the top.
Freeze Panes at the first blank cell so you always see the Names column and the ShowDates row.

Then....
you could use autofilter to quickly locate the names
and enter an "x" in the name/showdate intersection

If you ever needed a list of names by show date
you could just autofilter for an "X" in the specific show date

Is that something you could work with?

Regards,

Ron Coderre
Microsoft MVP - Excel

Pharm_hand -

Thanks for the help! That's the kind of thing I need, but perhaps tweaked....

Following your steps gave me a dropdown in each cell where I could choose names from my pre-written list. This is perfect, except what I need is to have Excel auto-complete my typing based on the values in the list. Using a mouse to choose from a drop-down doesn't save me any time. Does that make sense? And if so - is there a way to get it to work this way?

Carim -

Thanks for the link! That definately got auto-complete working, but it looks like you have to do it in a combo-box. Unfortunately, this means you have to double-click in the cell to use it, and then you can't Tab or Enter out of the box - just as slow.

Basically I need that auto-complete in a "normal" validated list somehow...without touching the mouse

Any ideas?

That sucks.

I think I found a work-around for now. I'll just cut-and-paste my list of 400+ names into the sheet in my template, HIDE those rows, then any name I start typing will be auto-completed from the values in the hidden rows.

The only thing I lose this way is a nice "central" list that every new document could pull from. This way I'll have to cut-and-paste for every new document I create. (though I suppose I could do a macro for that

Thanks for everyone's help!