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Level 1

5 points

Drop downs in numbers

I’m trying to create a recipe in a table on one sheet that has drop down boxes for my ingredients that are referenced back to a another sheet with all my ingredients and their prices. And after selecting that item I need it to automatically calculate my cost for that item based on the quantity I enter on the recipe table and the cost per unit info from my ingredient price sheet. I’ve seen how to do it in excel but can’t figure out on my brand new MacBook Air. Any ideas?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jan 30, 2022 10:56 PM

Best reply

SGIII

Level 8

35,528 points

Posted on Jan 31, 2022 1:29 AM

Here's an example of how you might calculate the cost of ingredients by looking up the item cost in a separate table and multiplying that by the quantity.

The formula as you would input it in C2, then fill or copy it down the column:

=XLOOKUP(A2,Ingredients::A,Ingredients::B,"not found",0)*B2

Numbers has a Pop-Up Menu data format that is similar to drop downs in Excel. But unlike dropdown in Excel, a Pop-Up Menu cannot automatically retrieve its values from a range of cells (such as you might have in your Ingredients table).

To "populate" a Pop-Up Menu simply select cells containing the various values you want in the menu and choose the Pop-Up Menu data format.

Each cell will then have a Data Format that looks something like this:

Drag to reorder the entries if needed, and make any additions/removals or further edits. Then simply copy-paste the cell down the column (select it, type command-c, select the rest of the cells in the column or wherever you want the Pop-Up Menu, type command-v to paste).

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Drop downs in numbers

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