How To Make Checkboxes In Google Sheets

Checkboxes are incredibly common in the digital world. They are used to mark tasks as complete, to turn options on and off with a single click, or in any of a number of other ways.

You might not think of checkboxes as something that can be used in a spreadsheet, but Google Sheets has the option to insert functional checkboxes directly into spreadsheet cells.

These can be used on their own, or together with many of the other features of Google Sheets such as formulas and conditional formatting

Inserting Checkboxes in Google Sheets

Here’s how to insert one or more checkboxes in Google Sheets

Step 1

Select the cell or cells you want to insert checkboxes into

Step 2

Open the Insert menu, and click on the Checkbox option near the bottom

Step 3

Checkboxes will be inserted into all selected cells

Step 4

When first inserted, each checkbox will be unchecked and look like the outline of an empty box, however if you click on a checkbox it will toggle back and forth between checked and unchecked states

Step 5

You can also toggle one or more checkboxes by hitting the space key on your keyboard while the cells containing the checkboxes are highlighted.

Using Checkboxes in Formulas

Checkboxes look very different from other data that can be stored in cells, but behind the scenes they’re actually just fancy ways to display TRUE and FALSE values.

You can see that this is the case by selecting a cell containing a checkbox and looking in the formula bar.

In the screenshot below, a checked checkbox is selected and the value TRUE displays in the formula bar for that cell

Because checkboxes are really just true/false values, they can be easily used in formulas and are especially useful when used in IF() statements.

For example, if you have a checkbox in cell A2, you can use the following formula to switch between two simple answers based on the status of that checkbox: “=if(A2=TRUE, “Yes! We have milk”, “No! We need to get milk”)”

Removing Checkboxes

If you ever try to replace a checkbox with another value by typing into the cell, you’ll see a red warning flag appear in the corner of the cell.

This is because the cell is looking for one of two values: TRUE or FALSE, and doesn’t know how to handle other values.

Here’s how to remove the error:

Step 1

Select any cells you want to remove checkboxes from

Step 2

Hit delete or backspace on your keyboard, and the checkboxes will disappear

Summary

Example Spreadsheet: Make a copy of the example spreadsheet

In this tutorial, I covered how to make checkboxes in Google Sheets. Want more? Check out all the Google Sheets Tutorials.