Conditional data validation using excel lists

Question

I am building a workbook to manage the expenses of a home renovation business. The table named 'Jobs' contains a 'status' column, which can contain various options such as 'Job started', 'Job complete', 'invoice sent' etc.

I intend to have another table called 'expenses', where I can add expenses, but only to jobs that have status set to 'Job started'. To do this, I would have a column with List Data Validation, but I don't know how to generate the list of jobs that only have the appropriate corresponding status.

Expenses table:

Jobs table:

Misc lists:

Edit for clarity: In the sample shown, when I click on items in the Job Site column of the 'Expenses' table, I would like to see 'Werribee', 'Croydon South' and Pascoe Vale South' in the list (since their status is 'Job started')

Answer 1

You can use this formula.

in Expense table you A2 put this.

=IFERROR(INDEX(Jobs!$A$2:$A$999,SMALL(IF(Jobs!$I$2:$I$999="Job started",ROW($1:$100)),ROW()-1)),"")

basically this looks up to worksheet Job, A2:A999 and checks if its status is "Job started", If its validation is positive, it copies the value from the range A2:A999 which has the "Job started", paste this on each cells on Expense table.

Don't forget this is a array formula so press Ctrl + Shift + Enter after copying the formula.

Answer 2

In an empty column (say F) beside the expenses table use the below 2 formula

for first row

F2 = 1/AGGREGATE(14,6,1/((JOBS!$I$2:$I$14="Job started")*(ROW(JOBS!$I$2:$I$14)>1)*ROW(JOBS!$I$2:$I$14)),1)

and next row onward

F3 = 1/AGGREGATE(14,6,1/((JOBS!$I$2:$I$14="Job started")*(ROW(JOBS!$I$2:$I$14)>F2)*ROW(JOBS!$I$2:$I$14)),1)

Drag down F3. Notice the >1 in F2 and >F2 in F3 and onward. This will give all row numbers that have "Job started" as status in the Jobs table

Once you have the row numbers, you can use Index(Jobs table, row num, column num) to get other data for those rows

Make sure the Jobs table range that you input in the formula starts form the first row ie A1:J7 as shown in your image

Example