Excel-lent

I'm trying to make my life and my teachers' lives easier by using Excel for their lesson plans. They have to include the objective numbers that are being addressed, and I vaguely remembered an email discussion of using Excel to create a drop down menu to make this easier (aka less typing). Yay for the Yahoo mail search feature that found the info in about 10 seconds. Pretty good job for going through about 9,000 emails. I kid you not. I'm a little behind.
The email's sender had used a look up table instead of drop down menu, insisting that it was even more convenient. And she had attached an example file. Way to go! So I started plugging in my data. Creating the formula for the look up function is where I've hit the brick wall. But I've received some links to online resources, and this thing might just work after all.
Too bad you won't get to hear my Samuel L. Jackson impersonation: "Enough is ENOUGH! I've had it with these muthaf*ckin' cells on this muthaf*ckin' spreadsheet!"