Unique list of records dropdown in Data Validation list

Hi,

Please help in solving the Unique list of records to be displayed in dropdown in List of Data Validation.

I have in $B$3:$B$3499 a list of records with all the duplicates and many re appearing values. I want to keep the source as is and want to get a unique list in the data validation list in Cell E3 displaying only unique records.

I don't want to use the conditional formating in excel to remove duplicates. I have similar 1000 columns as $B$3:$B$3499 for which i have 1000 drop down list as Cell E3. So formula based function will not help me in solving this . A VBA code will be very helpful to solve this problem. Please reply to this thread. I have attached the ..xls file with the required data.

Thanks,

Subhashish Ghosh