Jetformat

Add a controlled choice list to an Excel range

A data-entry sheet can benefit from a short list of allowed labels. A list validation rule gives spreadsheet users guidance when editing those cells.

Published · 2 min read

By allentatakai

Choose the entry range and the allowed values deliberately. Keep the vocabulary consistent with downstream code that interprets the workbook.

A focused terminal workflow

jetformat excel validation finance.xlsx --sheet Summary --range A2:A10 --list Ada,Bob -o finance-updated.xlsx

Provide a range and a comma-separated set of allowed choices. This creates a worksheet rule rather than repairing values already stored in the range.

Acceptance checks

Test the rule in the intended spreadsheet viewer and inspect existing values. Adding validation does not automatically clean previously entered data or enforce a server-side policy.

Open the output in a viewer, test the drop-down, and separately audit existing cell values against the allowed list.

Before repeating the operation

These examples use local sample filenames. Substitute your own paths and check jetformat excel validation --help against the installed version before running the task. Put paths containing spaces inside quotes.

Writing an Office document uses one credit per command. See the billing guide for the current rules.

Keep the input revision with the result so a later reviewer can reproduce the decision. For a write operation, choose a new output path first; use overwrite flags only when replacing a previously reviewed result is intentional.

See the excel validation options and examples for the command reference. Browse related excel commands when the next step requires a different operation.

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