Take the 2-minute tour ×

I'm using Microsoft Access to fill in information from a questionnaire, which has been answered by 80 people. This is a questionnaire with both quantitative and qualitative answers. I've set it up so that each row corresponds to a different person. How do I create a field with multiple choices to tick, as opposed to just a single yes/no tick box? For example, I have a question "Which of these ice cream flavours do you enjoy?" with answers vanilla, chocolate, mint, strawberry and other (this bit will need to be filled in with text). How would I do this in a single row, if it is indeed possible?

share|improve this question
add comment

4 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I strongly suspect your survey should be redesigned with more tables to be more flexible. I'd start with Duane Hookum's At Your Survey.

share|improve this answer
add comment

I think the link will help with this. I hope this helps.


share|improve this answer
add comment

when creating the tables in DESIGN VIEW, look at the "field properties" area at the bottom of the access window. then click on the "lookup" tab and change the "display control" setting from "text box" to "combo box". then under "row source type" select "value list" and then input the values you want in the "row source" section as follows:

if you want the options to be vanilla, strawberry and chocolate you type it as "vanilla";"strawberry";"chocolate"

then you set "allow multiple values" to "yes"

you can then decide to limit the possible answers to those in the list you have provided by changing the "limit to list" setting to "yes"

when you go back to your "datasheet view" you will be able to have a drop down list which check-boxes

i hope this helps

share|improve this answer
add comment

Using Access 2007 or later, this would be solved simply by using multivalue fields. The persons' names would be either a one or two-colum text field and the type of ice cream would be a multivalue field that gets the type(s) of ice cream from a lookup table. Use a query to count the numbers of times each type of ice cream is selected. The problem with multivalue fields is that users will need Access 2007/2010/2013, either the full version or the Runtime.

The qualitative responses, which I assume are yes/no answers, would come from a standard yes/no field. Alternatively the yes/no field could also be a lookup with the multivalue setting as No.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer


