The Dropdown Wizard
Cascading dropdowns in Google Sheets, built from a plain two column list. Pick a category and the next dropdown only offers what belongs to it. No INDIRECT, no named ranges, nothing to write by hand.
Free
No account, no card. Help and support
Dropdowns that follow each other
Choose Wine in the first column and the second offers Red, White and Sparkling. Choose Spirits and it offers Whisky and Vodka instead.
Built from a list you already keep
Two columns, category and option, one row per pair. The kind of list most people already have sitting in a tab somewhere.
See it before you apply
The preview counts your categories and options, and flags any category you have not added options for yet, before a single cell changes.
It asks before it overwrites
If a target column already has validation rules that the wizard did not put there, it stops and checks with you first.
How it works
One thing worth knowing
The option list for each row is built from whatever category is in that row when you apply. Change a category afterwards and that row keeps its old list until you run Refresh. It is a deliberate trade off: it keeps the add-on on the narrowest possible permissions, so it only ever touches the spreadsheet you have open.
Your data stays put
The Dropdown Wizard only reads the spreadsheet you have open, and sends nothing anywhere. No account, no server, no cost.
Wrangling a lot of tabs as well as a lot of lists?