title: Checkboxes for multiple values in a single cell in Excel
body: <p>I am a C#/.NET developer but am not too familar with Excel programming or VBA. For a side project, I have a spreadsheet that will be used by non-technical users for data entry. Later this spreadsheet will be exported to a different format via a C# command-line program that I wrote so that the data can be dumped into a different system.</p>
  
  <p>I need the data values to be entered exactly as the command-line program will expect them to be, so user error due to typos or slight wording differences would be problematic. I need the user to select from possible values rather than rely on the user to enter the correct value.</p>
  
  <p>For columns that can only have a single value in a cell, I was able to accomplish this by using a dropdown menu from which the user can select. I did this via the instructions here:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/add-or-remove-items-from-a-drop-down-list-0b26d3d1-3c4d-41f5-adb4-0addb82e8d2c" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/add-or-remove-items-from-a-drop-down-list-0b26d3d1-3c4d-41f5-adb4-0addb82e8d2c</a></p>
  
  <p>The problem is, I have several columns whose cells can hold multiple values, separated by commas. For example, I have a "Color" column. The value of a cell in this column may be a single color (e.g. "Red") or a list of colors separated by commas (e.g. "Red, Green, Blue"). Ideally I would like a user to be able to click the cell and see a list of checkboxes from which they could select colors, and when they are done the cell will be updated with those colors separated by commas.</p>
  
  <p>What is the best way to accomplish this? I have tried googling and found this method:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.contextures.com/excel-data-validation-multiple.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.contextures.com/excel-data-validation-multiple.html</a></p>
  
  <p>... which allows selecting multiple items from a dropdown menu, but it's inconvenient because the dropdown must be re-opened each time another item needs to be added. Checkboxes would be more convenient. Is this possible, and if so, how?</p>