As of Excel 2010, you can't directly use structured references as the source list for data validation. However, you CAN define a name for the structured reference, and use this new name instead.
For example, if I have a single-column table named Table1
that contains a column named Acceptable Values
, I could define a new name ValidValues
using the structured reference Table1[Acceptable Values]
. In the source field of the data validation list I can enter =ValidValues