Copy Paste Data Validation to Other Spreadsheet File in Google Sheets

0:00 This video is answering the question of how do you copy and paste data validation from one spreadsheet file to another? Because copy and pasting data validation within a spreadsheet is actually fairly easy, right? You can copy and paste the cell or you can copy the cell and then you can rightclick and you can paste special data validation . There you go. There's the drop down and we have the data validation . However, if we copy a cell and go to a completely different spreadsheet , like not a tab, another tab, but actually an entire spreadsheet file, completely different, and we try to rightclick, paste, special, data validation only, nothing happens. So, one way to copy and paste the data validation is to just copy and

0:47 paste the cell. And if I just paste the cell here and I look at this drop-own menu, it has all of the same options. But one of the issues with this is what if instead of the drop-down being all of these options are here, perhaps you did drop down from array. So let's remove all of these data validation rules and add a new rule. Drop down. Drop down from a range . Let's select our range . It's going to be this department's page and a so now we have exactly the same result except I can come into this particular page and add another department or some other option here very easily without having to update all of the drop-own menus. There's another

1:33 department. But how do I copy and paste this to another sheet where I'm going to get this input must fall within specified range . If I go to edit it, I get a reference error here. So, the trick is go over to your department's page and copy to an existing spreadsheet . We're going to select paste data validation and it says success. I can open it, but it's already open here. And I can see that the sheet is now called copy of departments. I need to delete that copy of to make it just departments. And now if I go and I select this drop-own menu, copy it and go to other spreadsheet file and I paste, it's still giving me an error.

2:20 Why is that? We still have the reference error . However, I can come in here and I can just copy and paste this department's A to A and click done. Applied to all very quickly. Yes, you still get the same error , but you can easily copy and paste instead of having to redo this drop-own value or from a range . If we do this, we have to go here, we have to select this all again, right? And you can do that if you want a different name for this particular sheet. But in both of these spreadsheet files, we want them probably to have the exact same name departments here on this tab. There you go. Hopefully that was very helpful to you. You can just copy

3:05 paste instead of having to copy and paste data validation rules between spreadsheet file. You're watching Better Sheets here on YouTube. Make sure you check out this video or this video and subscribe right now to get more tips, tricks, how-tos, get more out of your Google Sheets than you ever have before. I'm excited to be making a ton more videos here. Ask me questions down in the comments and I will answer them in future videos. But for right now, right here, one of these videos is going to be your next Google Sheet.