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Quick Overview

Unknown to many excel users, you can easily set up check boxes in Excel. You can use these check boxes to total a list of data by selecting various boxes.

The following Excelbuddy.com video demonstrates what this tutorial will accomplish.

The following tutorial will show you how to accomplish this task by creating an auto-totaling grocery list.

Lets Begin: Add the Developer Tab

1. First, we need to make sure the developer tab is displayed. Click the Microsoft logo in the upper left .
2. Next, click the “Excel Options” button.
3. Next, click the box for “Show the Developer tab in the Ribbon”
4. Now click “OK” – Not sure why I typed this step, but oh well!

How to make an auto-totaling grocery list using Check Boxes

The following example will show how to make an auto-totaling grocery list. The steps in this example can be adapted to fit a multitude of other applications. The files used in this tutorial are available at the bottom of this post. If you have any questions, please comment.

1. Start off with a list as shown below.
   
2. Next, goto to the “Developer Tab.”
   
3. Click “Insert”
   
   
4. Then click “Check box (Form Control)”
   
5. Once selected, the mouse will turn into a “+” sign. Click around Cell D4.
6. To Edit/Move the check box, you must right click with your mouse. Using the arrow keys, you can easily align the check box with column “D.”
   
7. To removed “Check Box 1,” right click and deleted the text.
8. Right click again on the Check Box and select “Format Control”
   
9. In the “Format Control” box, enter cell “$C$3″ in the cell link box and hit “OK”
   
10. Deselect the check box by click outside of the highlight box.
11. Click the box. Once clicked, you will now see the word “True” in Cell C3. Remove the check and the word “False” is displayed.
    
12. Now comes the fun part. Enter the following formula into cell “E3.”
    • =SUMIF(C3:C3,TRUE,B3:B3)
13. If the check box is selected, the dollar amount in displayed in “Column E”
    
14. If the check box is not selected, the dollar amount in not displayed in “Column E”
    
15. Now, repeat steps 3 – 12 for the remainder of the list.
    
16. Now use the AutoSum function to count the selected items in the grocery list from column “E”
    
17. To make the Grocery List more aesthetically pleasing, hide columns “C” and “E”
    

That sums up the basic introduction into the world of check boxes in Excel. Hopefully you found this tutorial easy to follow.

Please comment below if you have any questions.