Multiple Answers From Drop Down List

  • Thread starter Thread starter MaryAM
  • Start date Start date
M

MaryAM

A client of mine wants to include a drop-down list in Excel. The twist is
that she'd also like people to be able to choose more than one item from the
list in response to a question. For example, if people are asked why they
like bread, they can choose one or more answers from a list with tasty,
chewy, soft, nutritious. Can this be done in Excel? If so, how? Thanks!
 
Two ideas: You can either use multiple columns, and have user pick different
answers in each column, or you could use a list box (from Forms toolbar).
Under format contol, select the option to allow multiple selections (either
"multi" or "extend".)

The bigger question is how is the data from this dropdown to be user? If it
is to simply be displayed, you have numerous choices. If it's supposed to be
fed into some type of data analysis, then you need to keep 1 data point in
each cell.
 
If you use Luke's method the date can be extracted with an array formula.

if a2 and a3 contain:
tasty, chewy, soft, nutritious
chewy, soft, nutritious

and G3 contains Soft then

=SUM(IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(G3,A2:A3,1)),1,0)) returns 2.

Array formulas must be entered as Ctrl + Shift + Enter. You can tell that is
correct as Excel enclosed the formula with curley braces {}.

HTH
Peter A
 
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