How to use check box content controls in a Word document

Check boxes offer a childlike ocular room to denote department of state : on or off, true or fake, and indeed on, and they ‘re easier to use than always before ! We may be compensated by vendors who appear on this page through methods such as affiliate links or sponsored partnerships. This may influence how and where their products appear on our site, but vendors can not pay to influence the capacity of our reviews. For more information, visit our Terms of Use page

We ’ re all familiar with check boxes. We ’ ve been using them all our lives, even before electronic forms came into being. technically, an electronic check box control is a ocular representation of a binary express, such as on and off, truthful or false, and so on. One glance and you know the express. In this article, we ’ ll work through a bare exemplar using see box controls in Word to denote attendance. alternatively of reading through a list of names, with the news present or not present, you can quickly glean who is award and who isn ’ thyroxine by viewing the crack box controls .
I ’ meter using Microsoft 365 on a Windows 10 64-bit organization, but you can use earlier versions through 2010. For your appliance, you can download the demonstration .docx file. Word Online will display existing discipline box controls and their state, but you can ’ triiodothyronine change the country.

Reading: How to use check box content controls in a Word document

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Table of Contents

Denoting attendance

Using check box content controls couldn ’ thyroxine be easier nowadays. Figure A shows three simple crack boxes followed by participants Mary, Tom, and June. You can create this human body cursorily adequate as follows :

Position the cursor in the document where you want to insert the first check box.
Click the Developer tab.
In the Controls group, click the Check Box Content Control icon. Doing so will insert a check box in edit mode. We don’t want to change any of the default properties for now, so press the Right Arrow key twice to exit the control.
Press the Tab key and enter Mary. Strictly speaking, the tab isn’t necessary, but adding a little space will improve readability.
Insert two more controls, one for Tom and one for June.

Figure A

Wasn ’ metric ton that slowly ? The human body is immediately fix to use. Simply check or uncheck, appropriately ! For example, in Figure B, Tom didn ’ triiodothyronine attend the November 18th converge. You can besides print the number and check the controls manually .
Figure B

You might have noticed that the check box displays an x to denote a Yes/On/True express. You can change that to a more traditional hindrance cross off if you like.

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Changing the check box

An x might not be the direction you want to denote attendance. After all, it could be misunderstood as not in attendance. fortunately, you can easily change the ten to a more traditional check set as follows .

Click the Developer tab.
In the Controls group, click Design mode. Doing so will change the appearance of the check box controls (Figure C).
Select the one for Mary and then click Properties in the Controls group. The resulting dialog will display several properties. You might want to explore them all at a later time.
In the Check Box Properties section (at the bottom) click Change to the right of the Checked Symbol option. Doing so opens the Symbols dialog, which you might already be familiar with.
Choose Wingdings from the Font dropdown.
Browse down until you find the two alternate check marks shown in Figure C.
Choose one, click OK to insert it, and then click OK to return to the document.
You’re still in design mode, so click Design Mode.

Figure C

Simply click Mary ’ s check box command to display the selected check target ( step 7 ) to see the more traditional bridle commemorate. however, comment that the jump box is gone. If you choose the second check cross off in footprint 7, you ’ ll continue to see the bound constipate ( Figure D ). You ’ ll want to use the like check crisscross ; I ’ megabyte just saving a figure by showing you both in the lapp screenshot .
Figure D

This simple example uses check box controls to denote attendance. Attending members get a snap ; an vacate check box represents an absent member. You could besides use them to track disturbance items, visualize benchmarks, and thus on .

A word on support for older controls

Although bequest controls and even some ActiveX controls are silent available, I recommend using content controls because hold for the older sets could end without much notice ; realistically, I don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate see that happening soon in documents. however, any web-based documents should use the new controls and not ActiveX. Internet Explorer will probably be retired in 2022, and presently, Edge doesn ’ thymine support ActiveX. It ’ s unlikely it ever will support these outdated controls.