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Adding a Little Animation to Your Life
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Subscriber Eric van den Hout recently asked if there was a way to quickly fill a column with a large number of checkboxes bound to a particular cell. Excel allows you to easily add a checkbox by using the Forms toolbar. This type of checkbox is very similar to checkboxes you would use if you created a dialog box. You can adjust the size, location, and other properties of the checkbox. Especially helpful, you can bind or link the checkbox to any cell in your worksheet. When you select the checkbox, the value of the linked cell changes. Conversely, if you change the value of the cell, the status of the checkbox also changes.
In reality, a checkbox placed in this manner is related to two different cells in your worksheet: the cell over which it is placed and the cell to which it is linked. The linked cell behaves in relationship with the checkbox as described above. The cell over which it is placed becomes the checkbox's anchor, so to speak, determining where the checkbox is displayed.
It takes time to place a checkbox and set its properties just right. The biggest time-consuming tasks are getting the checkbox to be the right size and linking each checkbox to a different cell in the worksheet. You can make the job of placing a large number of checkboxes a bit easier by following these steps:
It is important to realize that by doing this you save a great deal of time, but you don't save all the setup time you might want to. Even though you may place fifty checkboxes in this manner, all the checkboxes are still linked to the same cell. Thus, a change in the "selected" state of one checkbox results in a change to them all. The only way around this is to individually select each checkbox, display its properties, and modify the linked cell. So where do the time savings come from? In not having to place, size, and align each of the checkboxes individually.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (1964) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 2000 2002 2003
Got the Time? Understanding the ins and outs of working with times and dates can be confusing. Remove the confusion--ExcelTips: Times and Dates is an invaluable resource for learning how best to work with times and dates.