Drop down lists created in LO calc not working in Excel

Hi,
I am creating a sheet that contains drop down lists created with the Data>Validity dialog, I am saving the sheet as either .xls or .xlsx as it needs to be used by colleagues on Windows boxes with Exel.

We have tried opening it in Exel on Windows boxes and the drop downs are simply not there anymore?

We also tried opening on a Mac with Exel and that had yet another issue, the window could not be resized??

I am not that bothered about the Mac window resize issue but I really need to solve the drop down list issue, I have googled and found many examples of a similar but not the same issue with sheets created in Exel not working correctly in LO by my issue seems slightly different as those all seem to refer to either lists being referenced from a separate sheet/document or some kind of MS specific formulae/macro/script.

Any help or pointers much appreciated!!

When you use “Data”, “Validity”, from the “Allow” drop down select “Cell Range” instead of “List”, and then use a range of cells to list the available options.

This works saving to xls or xlsx from LibreOffice 5.2.0.2, possibly also from earlier versions but I have not tested.

I don’t think Excel supports the list without using cells to hold the options.