Data validation specific characters only

To use data validation to allow a list of specific characters only, you can use a rather complicated array formula based on the COUNT, MATCH, and LEN functions. In the example shown, data validation is applied with this formula:

=COUNT(MATCH(MID(B5,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(B5))),1),allowed&"",0))=LEN(B5)

where "allowed" is the named range D5:D11.

Explanation

Working from the inside out, the MID function is used to generate an array from text entered in B5 with this snippet:

MID(B5,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(B5))),1)

explained in detail here. The result is an array like this:

{"A";"A";"A";"-";"1";"1";"1"}

which goes into MATCH as the lookup value. For the lookup array, we use the named range "allowed", concatenated to an empty string (""):

allowed&""

The concatenation converts any numbers to strings so that we are matching apples-to-apples. The result is an array like this:

{"A";"B";"C";"1";"2";"3";"-"}

The last argument in MATCH, match_type is set to zero to force an exact match. Because we give MATCH multiple lookup values, we get back an array with multiple results:

{1;1;1;7;4;4;4}

Each number in this array represents a match. In the event a match isn't found for a character, the array will contain a #N/A error.

Finally, the COUNT function is used to count the numbers in the result array, which is compared to a count of all characters in the cell calculated with the LEN function. When MATCH finds a match for all characters, the counts are equal, the formula returns TRUE, and data validation succeeds. If MATCH doesn't find a match any character, it returns #N/A instead of a number. In that case, the counts don't match and data validation fails.

Note: this formula relies on brute force to get the job done. If you have a better approach, please leave a comment below.

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