Would you like to display a pop-up message when a user enters a value into a cell? You don’t need a macro to achieve this.

Excel’s built-in Data Validation feature allows you to display a message when the user has entered a value in a cell. It is reasonably easy to set this up, see below for instructions.

Let’s say we want to display a message when a user has entered a number in cell B2.

Steps

1. Select cell B2.
2. Press in sequence Alt D L do not hold the keys down. This opens the Data Validation dialog.
3. Select Custom from the Allow drop-down and enter the following formula in the formula box.

   =ISBLANK(B2)

   See image below.

4. Click the Error Alert tab.
5. Select Information from the Style drop-down.
6. Enter a title and enter the message that you want to display.
   See image below.
7. Click OK.

If you type an entry into cell D2 and press Enter the pop-up will display – see image below.

Clicking OK, Cancel or the top right X will clear the popup.

Clicking the Help button takes you to a Data Validation web site – not very helpful.

If you delete the entry in cell B2 nothing will display.