How to Add Checkbox and Radio Button in Microsoft Excel?

Checkbox and radio buttons are very interactive tools in Microsoft Excel. They are widely used to select and deselect an option inside your spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. Checkboxes are basically used to select more than one option at a time. A user can toggle on or off these checkboxes and each checkbox does its work individually. Radio buttons are used to select only one option by the user. Like in a test of multiple choice questions you are selecting an option in the given four options.

How to Add Checkbox and Radio Button in Excel?

1. Activating developer tab in Excel
2. Adding radio buttons or option buttons in Excel
3. Adding checkbox in Excel
4. Customizing checkbox and radio buttons in Excel

1. Activating Developer Tab in Excel

Now for adding checkboxes and radio button or option button in Microsoft Excel, you need to have developer tab activated in the menu bar ribbon. The developer tab allows to add more options to your spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. Generally you can add all form control elements like button, scroll bar, combo box, list box, etc. In our case, we are going to activate developer tab for adding checkboxes and radio buttons in Excel sheet.

Right click on the menu bar at the top of your screen in Excel and click on ‘Customize the Ribbon…’ option. You can also click the small gear settings button at the right corner of the ribbon and go to customize ribbon option. Otherwise go to “File > Options > Customize Ribbon” menu.

Now when you’re inside ‘Excel Options’ section, select the checkbox against ‘Developer’ option under ‘Main Tabs’ column as shown below. Click on ok to add developer tab in the Excel top menu bar.

2. How to Add Radio Buttons in Microsoft Excel?

Adding up the radio buttons on your Excel sheet is easy when you’re done with activating developer tab. Here, we are taking an example in which we are going to make an ‘Attendance Record’. It’s up to you can do it on any sheet or in your current worksheet.

We have made a ‘Roll no’ Column, a ‘Student Name’ column and a ‘Status’ column. Except for Status Column we have filled some sample data in other columns as shown below.

It’s time to add some radio buttons in the status column. Click on the cell where you want to add it, in our case, we have our status column. Now, go to the ‘Developer’ menu, click on ‘Insert’ tab and then click ‘Option Button (Form Control)’.

You can see the cursor is changed to crosshair (+) shape. Go to the selected cell, click and drag the cursor to required width and create a radio button. By default Excel will show the text of the radio button as ‘Option Button 1’. You can right click and edit the text as you need. In our case, we want two of them, one with the text as present and other as absent.

Now, you can add them to all the cells of the status column by simply dragging the cells downward as shown below. If you want to have different button text, then drag the radio button element from developer menu and edit the text for the buttons.

Now, let’s learn about how you can add checkboxes to an Excel sheet. 

3. How to Add Checkbox in Microsoft Excel?

Adding up checkboxes in Excel sheet is as easy as adding up the radio buttons like we have done before. Now the thing is we need to make a different example for the checkboxes because checkboxes have different role than the option buttons.

For this, we are taking an example of ‘Student Opted Subject’ table in which we are going to show that each student can either choose one or more subjects. We have left the column ‘Subjects opted’ blank because here we are going to add some checkboxes with different name of the subjects.

To add a checkbox, simply visit ‘Developer > Insert’ menu and choose checkbox option. Drag it in the cell where you want to add a checkbox.

Now, we have our arranged four checkboxes in one cell and drag the cell content to copy them in remaining cells of the column. As you can see, you’ll be able to check on more than one checkboxes also.

By default Excel will show the name as ‘Check Box 1’, ‘Check Box 2’, etc. You can right click and edit the text as per your need.

4. Formatting Checkboxes and Radio Buttons in Excel

Adding the form control elements like checkbox or radio button is easy in Excel as explained above. Similarly you can customize the feel and look of the elements by right clicking and choosing “Format Control” option.

• You can change the background color, outline color and line width of the elements.
• Choose the default option as checked or unchecked.
• Protect the elements when the Excel sheet is protected.
• Resize or move independently or along with the cell.

Below is an example of customized option or radio button and check box.

Conclusion

In above discussion, we have learned about how to activate developer tab in Excel. And insert form control elements like radio buttons (option buttons) and checkboxes on the cell. Excel will save and retain the data whenever you check or uncheck radio buttons and checkboxes on your worksheets. This is a simple usage of checkbox and radio buttons in Excel, you can also assign the macro and process the received inputs to have complex results.