Excel is a great program for organizing and analyzing the information that you have in your system. But what if you have lots of data entry errors and inconsistencies?

In this Excel Training Video, I show you 3 ways to minimize data entry errors. You will learn how to employ Excel’s Data Validation feature to prevent accidental and intentional data entry errors!

These are the steps for this Excel Video Training Lesson:

1. Choose the cell or range of cells that you want to apply Data Validation to.
2. Select Data, Validation and start with the “Settings” tab.
3. To control a range of dates, select “Date” in the Allow drop-down menu. Choose the range of dates that you wish to control. In this video I chose <= =TODAY()
4. To create a “Pick from list” validation: 1st step is to create the list (in a separate workbook) and then “Name” the list. In the Allow menu, choose “List” and in the Source, use the F3 shortcut to paste in your named list.
5. To prevent Duplicate entries, in the Allow menu choose “Custom” – This allows you to write a Formula. E.g. = COUNTIF($E$ :$E$30,E2)=1 where E2 is the 1st cell in your Validation range.
6. In the “Error Alert” tab, you can pick from 3 different “Styles. Only the “Stop” style will prevent a data entry that violates your Data Validation rules. The other 2 styles are warnings and information – you can over-ride the validation rules with either of these 2 styles.

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