Internal Controls in Excel

One of the most important things you can do for your client and yourself after you have created a wonderful spreadsheet is protect your formulas, etc. from accidental or even perhaps, malicious changes. Here is a pretty good video, plus you can jam out to the muzak while it loads.



We are also going to talk about the importance of Documentation, how Data Validation can help ensure that users only enter data that conforms with expectations and using Conditional Formatting to highlight errors. Your book does a pretty good job with "auditing", pages 716-723.

Here is an example of how to create a dropdown list:



However, if you only have a few items for your drop down list, say 2 or 3, that are not likely to change, you can type the list in lieu of putting the list on a separate sheet and naming the range. It will look like this:

Each choice in the drop down list should be separated by commas.