Clever Clogs tip # 744
6 August 2024


Manage your data using checkboxes (Excel 365) *

Hello and welcome to the first Tuesday of the month... Clever Clogs Tip Time. Hope you enjoyed some sunny days in July... sunlight triggers our bodies to generate Vitamin D, which plays a crucial role in maintaining bone health, reducing blood pressure, enhancing our immune system, and improving mental well-being!

But back to the tip... Microsoft recently rolled out Checkboxes in Excel and a couple of weeks ago I got the new feature. They are very easy to create, user-friendly and extremely versatile. Happiness is!

Microsoft said they expected all Excel 365 Current Channel users to have Checkboxes "by the end of July", so check it out! (Pun not intended. ;)

Here's how:

  1. Select the cells where you want the checkboxes.
  2. Click the Checkbox button on the Insert tab.

If you formatted your data as a Table (which I sincerely hope you do) it automatically creates a checkbox for new rows.

To check or uncheck one or more Checkboxes, simply click the checkbox. That said, by now you know I love keyboard shortcuts so why not press the Spacebar? You can select a single checkbox or toggle multiple selected checkboxes at once.

To remove Checkboxes simply press the Delete key. If the checkbox was checked, Delete will first uncheck it. Press Delete again to remove it.

"Behind the scenes" the checkboxes are added as TRUE and FALSE values and you can quickly summarise it by clicking anywhere in the data and selecting Recommended PivotTables from the Insert tab.

No know-how of PivotTables necessary.

I also like the ease with which you can use Conditional Formatting. Select the checkboxes (CTRL + SPACE, anyone?), click the Conditional Formatting button on the Home tab, followed by Equal To and type false in the relevant box.

Finally, if you send the file to someone who doesn't use Excel 365 they will see TRUE or FALSE, rather than checkboxes:

Let me know what you are going to use it for!

Related tips

  1. Quickly format and enable filtering of your data: tip_429.php
  2. Faster form filling, using your keyboard: Select or clear a checkbox: tip_242.php
  3. Create PivotTables - no know-how necessary: tip_624.php
  4. Select rows and columns in a table: tip_525.php
  5. Find and highlight all occurrences of a word or number: tip_329.php
  6. How (not) to send a PivotTable report to a third party: tip_740.php

Last month's CleverClogsTipTime on LinkedIn (newest posts first)

  1. Show seconds in the system tray clock
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  3. No, I don't want to play Candi Crush Saga
  4. New Scheduling Assistant feature in New Outlook

K.

PS To help you put these tips into practice I developed a series of 60-minute webinars, giving you the opportunity to see the hints, tips and time-saving shortcuts in action. Currently, they are held on Thursdays at Three, but after 7 November I will change it to a lunch and learn time... Roem@Noon. I realise 12 o'clock UK time isn't a good time for my contacts in the States and/or "down under", but I am toying with the idea to record them. Let me know if that would help.


* Unless stated otherwise this tip is written for Microsoft 365 desktop apps and Windows 11 users, but might also be useful in Office 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019.