Hi guys so I have some data columns on my spreadsheet that are set up as dropdown on the spreadsheet but Glide was not able to create the dropdown when I first linked the Spreadsheet. How do I create a dropdown menu to match with those columns?
To get a drop-down list in Glide, you need to use a Choice component.
A choice component needs a list of options as its source, which must be a single column with one option per row. So to set that up in your spreadsheet or Glide Table, you need something like the following:
Hi Darren, thanks for your timely response. So I set up my sheet to use Google Sheet’s [Data Validation] option for the user to select options. Please see the attached image. Can I use this? If not cannot you explain a bit more about what you mean by Choice Component?
No, you can’t use Google Sheet validation in Glide. Glide only syncs data with your Google Sheet, it knows nothing of your formatting or any data validation rules.
With Glide, you are much better treating your Google Sheet purely as a data source, and minimise (or even eliminate) any special formatting, formulas, etc. All of that is much better done in Glide.
Here is the Glide documentation on the Choice Component:
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Thanks for your help.
Hi Emmanuel, I’m trying to do the same thing, using a data validation/pick list component in the glide data table. I’m assuming this type of thing isn’t possible but wanted to see if you had any success here.
The choice component works in a form, but I was trying to streamline the data entry before the information gets presented in the app.
Would Glide load those as a text column instead? I’m thinking, to set validation rules in G Sheets, you need to have a similar setup in G Sheets as what you’re showing here:
So, presumably, those validation rules can be reused in Glide?
Can you explain more about what you’re trying to achieve?
hey Tamara… sorry, I don’t really follow your question. What I showed there was just a list of values, which would appear as the same list of values in the Glide Data Editor. There were no validation rules in the GSheet, and even if there were - Glide would ignore them.
Just guessing, but I read that as meaning they would be entering data via the Glide Data Editor, and were looking for additional functionality there - pick lists, etc. Probably an Airtable user 
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Lol, Airtable. FWIW I like Glide way better.
Basically, I’m creating a large archive of user personas (the end state will just be a page with some textual data, images, etc.)
Each persona has a list of products/software tools assigned to them that they tend to use, however we have ~100 of these products. Rather than typing them in, I was trying to create a list of products in a separate data table and select/check the names (versus typing them in each time).
I found this ‘lookup’ option which lists a set of values from a separate table, but doesn’t allow me to select them, it just populates the whole list.
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Yeah, the Data Editor doesn’t have the sort of functionality that you’re looking for. I just replied with a suggestion in your other thread.
Hi Darren, thanks again for your suggestion. I ended up:
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Created a data table in Airtable
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Made a multi-select field and populated there
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Imported it to Glide
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You have to then convert that array of values to a joined list, then you can present it in the UI
I know it might seem like an unnecessary step, but at some point we are going to ask a larger team to manage this data and having them select from a controlled list of values is probably important.
I really appreciate your help and feedback!
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