Office 2013 In Depth

Taking Advantage of Data Validation

Even a worksheet containing the best-built formulas and the most advanced Excel functions can still end up providing you with invalid results for the various sheet calculations. This is because people can make mistakes when entering the data into the worksheet. No matter how well designed the worksheet is, incorrect values in cells still render invalid results when they are acted upon by formulas and functions.

A strategy for greatly reducing the possibility of an invalid entry in a cell or cell range or a field column in an Excel table is to use data validation rules. Data validation simply means that the data entered into a cell range that has a validation rule applied to it must meet the criteria specified ...