You may want to look at Data|Autofilter. It works like what you describe.

Debra Dalgleish has some notes:
http://contextures.com/xlautofilter01.html

choop wrote:
>
> I have a file with 3000 lines and 4 columns:
>
> 1) Kingdom
> 2) Phylum
> 3) Class
> 4) Order
>
> As you can imagine, all of the "order" entries are unique, as well as
> every line in the file.
>
> How can I create a cascading dropdown in excel that will allow me to
> choose my Kingdom, then have the next dropdown automatically
> pre-populate with the appropriate phlyum. Then class will prepopulate,
> and then obviously order...
>
> I want to make it simple for a person to make selections from the
> shortest possible list.
>
> I was going to do this with named lists and the indirect function, but
> there would literally be over one hundred named lists. Is there any
> other way to do this?
>
> Thanks!

--

Dave Peterson