You would think that a long-standing spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel would have support for adding in checkboxes. However that was not the case until this week, The Windows and Mac versions of Excel have now been updated with checkboxes support.
In a blog post, Microsoft says:
We"re excited to announce the release of Checkboxes to production in Excel. They are great for checklists, managing tasks and visualizing your data at a glance. With just a few clicks, you can insert Checkboxes into any cell, making your spreadsheets more dynamic and user-friendly.
Excel now lets users insert checkboxes by first selecting the range where you want to put them. Then all you have to do is click on the Select option, followed by the Checkbox selection. Checking and/or unchecking one or more checkboxes is handled in Excel by simply clicking on that checkbox and then selecting one or more of those checkboxes. You can then hit the Space button. You can also hit the Delete button to get rid of checkboxes you have selected.
Microsoft adds that If any of the checkboxes were checked, you can press the Delete button to uncheck them, and then press the same Delete button to remove them.
In addition to today"s announcements of the Windows and Mac Excel apps adding checkbox support, the web version of the app, along with the iOS and Android versions, will be adding the same feature very soon. The company estimates that "all users on Current Channel to have access by the end of July 2024."
Microsoft recently added new regular expression (Regex) functions in Excel for Windows and Mac for members of the Windows Insider Channel. The app will also soon add some new Copilot generative AI features which include a "chat helper" which will allow users to get more conversational answers to questions about Excel.