Many Excel users go to great lengths to create true and false, or yes and no, types of values in the cells of their spreadsheets. This might involve typing the words or entering a specific character or number, but these methods have their drawbacks. The form controls enable you to link a check box to a specific cell, giving it a value of true or false that can be accumulated and reported by using one of Excel's counting functions.
Step 1
Select each check box and click the "Properties" icon on the Ribbon, or right-click the check box and select "Format Control" from the context menu. Click the "Control" tab and type the cell address in the "Cell link" text box. For example, if you have placed the check box control over cell C4, type C4 in the text box. Linking the control to a cell places the value True (if the box is checked) or False (if unchecked) in the linked cell.
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Step 2
Select the box and double-click the label portion of the control. Delete the label (by default "Check Box X") so that only the check box itself is visible.
Step 3
Insert the COUNTIF function in the desired cell, typing "=COUNTIF()", without the quotation marks. Insert the range of cells between the formula's parentheses that represents the column or row containing all the check boxes, for example C2:C7. Add a comma and the condition criteria which, in the case of the check boxes, is either True or False. To count all checked boxes, make the criteria True. An example of the completed function appears as follows:
=COUNTIF(C2:C7, True)
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