Changing the font color is one way to represent the selected item in the drop-down. You could just as easily use the Fill property instead. How to change the color of a cell in an Excel drop-down ...

Many Excel users use the RGB codes to input color into their spreadsheet’s cells or fonts. They have three components as a named range; these are Red, Green, and Blue.

Return to Excel and start clicking cells. Each time you change the selection, you trigger the procedure, which changes the fill color of the active cell, temporarily.

In addition to sorting by values, Excel can sort by cell color, font color, and cell icon. First, you must you must define the colors for your sort columns/fields.