Google Sheets: Create a Dropdown menu maintaining font formatting within the source range

Question

I have a Google Sheet with a list of formatted text that is generated based on user input.

I now want to create a dropdown menu based on this list with the color formats still intact as it is added information for the user.

Is this possible? If not, what other workaround is there?

Will greatly appreciate any assistance.

Answer 1

The problem is that, there is no way to format the dropdown choices. Aside from that, this should copy the style of the inRange cells to the outRange cells.

var sheets = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
var inRange = sheets.getRange('A2:A4');
var outRange = sheets.getRange('C2:C10');

function createDropDown(){
  var rangeRule = SpreadsheetApp.newDataValidation().requireValueInRange(inRange).build();
  outRange.setDataValidation(rangeRule); // set dropdown to your range
}

function onEdit() {
  var inValues = inRange.getValues().flat();
  var outValues = outRange.getValues().flat();
  var inStyles = inRange.getRichTextValues().flat();
  var outStyles = [];

  outValues.forEach(function(outValue){
    var match = inValues.indexOf(outValue);
    outStyles.push([inStyles[match]]);
  });

  outRange.setRichTextValues(outStyles);
}

Sample: