Using Excel’s forms you can make your life easier. How? Forms can help you reduce the number of mistakes you make when you enter data into Excel. To be able to use Forms in Excel, you must turn your data into an Excel Table. Click anywhere inside the dataset and press Ctrl+T to create an Excel table. The method discussed here does not require and VBA.

If you need people on the web to enter data into your Excel worksheet, that is a different matter altogether. Have a look at our post called Microsoft Forms.

The next step is to add the Form button to the Quick Access toolbar. It doesn’t exist in the ribbon. It’s easy to do. In Excel on the top row of the screen click on the down arrow. Go to More Commands from the context-sensitive menu. In the drop-down choose Commands Not in the Ribbon. Scroll down to find Form… Click the Add button and click OK.

Select somewhere inside your table. Click on the new form button you just added. Your new form will appear.

Data Validation

You can add data validation to your forms. It works the same was as regular data validation so please have a look at our post on that by clicking the link. On the down side, the form does not show any drop down lists for your data validation.

Search

You can use forms to search for rows in your table. The Criteria button is used for that. You can use wildcards (*) and greater than (>) or less than (<) symbols as well as others to specify what you need to find.

YouTube

Here is a fairly short YouTube video by Leila Gharani called SUPER EASY Excel Data Entry Form (NO VBA). It’s less than 7 minutes long.

Here is another video. It’s by Kevin Stratvert. It’s called Simple Excel Data Entry Work Form Tutorial. It’s less than 11 minutes long.