Data Validation - Is there a way to surpass the 255 characters limit?

Again Bernie, I thank you very much, I'm actually very honored to have met you here while I'm also very embarrassed from you for the amount of questions I had asked. Thank you.

Weirdly, the last link that you had sent work, although I don't know why the previous one had crashed. I hope this issue doesn't happen again, but in case it does, you'll have to excuse me if I ask you for her once again.

Much respect to you sir.

Dear Bernie,

I don't know what went wrong with my workbook, but it seems that every time I click on any of the drop-down cells that you had added codes to to hide other rows when they contain a specific text, my excel document completely crashes and stops functioning. Not only that, the whole workbook freezes and I can't press on anything else before I press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and kill the program from the task manager. I tried opening from different copies that I have, and they all gave me the same outcome. Do you have any idea why is this happening? It's a disaster to be honest if I can't fix this problem...

"Your formulas that return "" effectively hide those cells. We could apply Conditional Formatting to change them to white text on a white background - that is easy to do, but not really needed." Yes I had done it before you had added the pre-requested codes to hide the rows, but it seemed very unprofessional. 

I was wondering if we can add a text "--Select a field--" and "--Select a course--" to the cells C3 and C4 (respectively) in the sheet "GE Courses Description" before a student clicks on the drop-down list to choose their corresponding choice. Just like we have in cell C2 of the same sheet, but does not show on the drop-down list. I don't know if my answer is clear but I hope you get me? I tried doing it myself but it won't work even if I add the previously mentioned to every named range, as it would only show once the drop-down list is clicked, but not before. I believe it needs a code as well, am I correct?

Thank you a lot Bernie

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AhyDdnjegKkhbE8anGeR2Gs4m-4

The comments are highlighted in yellow and they can be found in the first sheet called "GI Calculator" and the second sheet called "Summary".

Again, THANK YOU!

Please notify me if anything went wrong while downloading or while checking the workbook

Although I am very embarrassed from the questions I had already asked, but could you kindly do the "Hide" VBA code for 3 easy criterias if I share with you a link to another sheet? Please excuse my ongoing questions