Meal Planner

 

This article shows you how to create a meal planner in Excel. Here's what we are trying to achieve:

Meal Planner Example

1. On the second sheet, create the following named ranges.

Name Range Address
Breakfast A2:A10
Lunch B2:B10
Dinner C2:C10

Named Ranges

Note: you can add 7 more breakfast meals in the future without changing the range address.

2. On the first sheet, select cell C4.

3. On the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, click Data Validation.

Click Data Validation

The 'Data Validation' dialog box appears.

4. In the Allow box, click List.

5. Click in the Source box and type =Breakfast.

Validation Criteria

6. Click OK.

Result:

First Drop-down List

7. Repeat steps 2 to 6 for cell D4 and cell E4, but instead of the Breakfast reference use the Lunch and Dinner reference.

8. Select the range C4:E4 and drag it down to row 10. This will copy the drop-down lists to the other days.

Result:

Meal Planner in Excel