[Space] GURPS Handbook of the Planets

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Brett

The interface is a bit clunky, requiring the user to type accurately input that would be better selected from menus.

I haven't done very much with your sheet beyond a quick look-see, but this is actually a really easy fix, with a little bit of time invested (I do lots of menu's in my GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet).

In Excel 2000: Data (menu) -> Validation
In Excel 2007/10: Data (tab) -> Validation
In OpenOffice: Data (menu) -> Validity

In all of them, in the Validation window, you can select List for the type of Validation. In the list entry box you can create a comma separated list in Excel; in OpenOffice you put each entry for the list on it's own line. In either you can also set the list to be a Cell Range instead, so you can create dynamically changing lists by changing the target cell values (or, in the case of Excel, so you can create list entries which include a comma - the list is comma deliminated in Excel, so values with comma's are not allowed in the simple list, but are within a Cell Range).

Other Validation options can be useful to restrict cell values to decimals, integers, as well as numbers above, below, or between given values, and a few other options. Validation is really useful for this kind of sheet.