Simple Combo box help

[Roscoe]

I've searched but can't find something this simple.

(Examples in VBA Help are hard for me to translate to my needs)

I have an alphabetized list of 1300+ items on a separate sheet in the
same workbook. I need a combo box to pop up from whatever cell I am
in, show me the list, allow me to type in the first few letters to take
me to that section of the list (or the item itself if I type enough
letters) quickly, and by selecting "OK" enter the item in the cell from
which I called the macro.

Before people suggest it, I already currently use "data validation" but
this solution has two drawbacks
(1) typing the first letter does nothing
(2) the data validation drop down box is the same width as the cell,
which is much too narrow to show all of the pertinent data the user
needs (I wrap the resulting selection to make it all fit)

Can somebody point me to an example somewhere that would help me do
this.

Thanks!

Roscoe

 

[Roscoe]

One more thing....if possible, I would like to avoid reloading the
combobox everythime it is called as I suspect 1300+ items may take
awhile and this may be called multiple times as one fills several
consecutive blocks

 

[Debra Dalgleish]

There's a sample file here that provides a combobox from which you can
select one of the values from the data validation list. You may be able
to adapt this to your worksheet:

http://www.contextures.com/excelfiles.html

Under 'Data Validation', look for 'Data Validation Combobox'

 

[Roscoe]

Wow, that...might...do what I want...once I fgure out how the heck it
works. there are others that look promising, like only listing the
items from the table that apply to a condition (like the date for
example would shrink the list to only those items that fall within the
target date...
This is gonna take some work, but it looks good...I think