Check Marks in Excel

What is a Check Mark?

Among various characters checkmark is one of the characters used to indicate that the item or product in the list is correct, chosen or selected. A check mark is denoted by the symbol ✓ also called a tick mark or tick. This check mark indicates the meaning of yes, correctness, acknowledgement, agreement, verified or approved.

Sometimes the x mark is used, showing the meaning of no or wrong. It is used in printed documents, printed forms, computer software, etc., to select or choose the item from the list of products. It is used in Word or Excel in different ways, like static check marks and inserting a clickable check box.

Check Mark in Excel

In Excel, there are several methods to insert a checkmark. It is inserted based on data sets. The user uses Excel for various data types like alphabets, numeric, charts and graphs etc. During such types, there is a need to insert to checkmark for the list of items or products. Let’s discuss various methods how to insert a checkmark in Excel.

1. How to Insert a Check Mark using Shift P, Windings 2 font type

STEP 1: Enter the alphabet in the cell ’P’. To use the uppercase letter simply click ‘SHIFT + P” if the caps lock button is off. An uppercase letter ‘P’ will be displayed in the cell

STEP 2: Select the cell which contains the value and choose the font type as “Wingdings 2”

A check mark is present in the cell.

The Wingdings check mark is present in a cell A1 as shown below

To insert the (x) symbol in the cell click SHIFT + O and change the font to Wingdings 2 type. It inserts the (x) mark in the cell.

2. How to insert Check Mark using Insert- symbol menu?

Excel provides another default function called Symbol command where it displays various symbols. Among the multiple symbols the user can choose the tick mark.

Step 1: Select a cell in the worksheet namely A1.

Step 2: Choose the Symbol dropdown command from the Insert tab in the Excel ribbon. The dropdown will display all the supported symbols.

Step 3: A dialog box will appear, in that choose Wingdings as Font option, and scroll down to find the check mark character.

Select the check mark and choose the Insert button to insert the checkmark in the required cell. Choose Close the dialog box window. In the above image in the recently used symbols the tick mark is present. Hence it helps to save the user’s time, if next time the tick mark is chosen.

The tick mark is present in the cell C1.

3. How to insert the check mark using ALT 0252?

In the previous method if the tick mark is chosen from the symbol dropdown dialog box a character code called 252 displays at the bottom.  This acts as good remainder of a check mark shortcut in Excel.

To insert the check mark using the character 252, following steps are followed.

Step 1: Select a cell and change the font type to wingdings.

Step 2: Hold ‘ALT’ button and type ‘0252’. Type, the number 0252 using numeric pad in the keyboard, not by QWERTY numbers above the letters.

Step 3: If the Wingdings Font is not selected, then there displays another character.

 A tick mark is enabled by pressing ‘ALT 0252 ‘code.

4. How to enable check mark using Excel function?

Excel provides default function to enable check mark in the worksheet. Function called UNICHAR is a text which returns character represented by Unicode argument in parentheses. Every character has its own code in the computer memory. If the user wants to insert a character, then that characters specified code is used along with the UNICHAR function.

Here to insert a check mark,

=UNICHAR (10003) inserts check mark and

=UNICHAR (10004) inserts a heavy check mark.

Step 1: Select the cell namely A1 and type the function as =UNICHAR (10003)

To insert a heavy check mark, select a cell and type the function as =UNICHAR (10004)

The above chart shows a slight difference in cells A1 and B1, where A1 is a checkmark and B1 is a heavy checkmark. While applying this function, the user must keep the font style the same. While using the UNICHAR function, the checkmark must be the cell's only value.

UNICHAR(10007) inserts the X symbol

UNICHAR(10008) inserts the heavy X symbol

Hence by using Excel function one can insert check mark symbol.

5. How to insert Check Mark Using Conditional formatting?

Conditional formatting would react to the cells based on certain conditions if they were met. It helps to add icons to the cells based on the values present in the cell; therefore, this feature helps to add a checkmark in Excel. An example is how to use conditional formatting for inserting a tick mark in Excel.

Here the data entered is based on various fruit sales in January month in a particular area where the target should be 500.

STEP 1: Select the data where the check mark should be inserted. Here the data range selected is from A1:A10.

Step 2: Choose Conditional formatting from Home tab. A popup menu will appear. In that choose Icon set. Among various symbols select the check mark which is a 3 –symbol icon set which includes (a check mark, an X, and an exclamation mark)

If the above option is selected, Excel default assigns the check mark for values equal to or greater than 67%, X for below 33 %, and an exclamatory mark is set between 33 and 66 percentage. To assign rules according to the data, use the manage rules option.

Step 3: Select the manage rule option from the Conditional Formatting menu by selecting the data range. A dialog box will open, in that choose the option” Edit Rule “command to modify the rules under the symbols which are selected for data range.

Step 4: Edit Formatting Rule dialog box will open, in that choose “Format all cells based on their values”. Change the value to “500” and change the Type drop down to Percent to Number. This change makes the checkmark to be inserted in the cell where the value is greater than 500 which is a target value.

Step 5: Click OK after the changes are made return to the worksheet where the changes are made.

In the above chart, the values that meet the target are inserted with a check mark, while the rest are inserted with an exclamatory mark. Hence it is easy to check whether the product meets the monthly target.

One can display this data without displaying the numbers, and only the icon is displayed. To do this, choose Conditional Formatting >Edit Rules. In the Edit rules dialogue box, choose Show Icon Only checkbox.

After the change is made, the icon will only display in the message.

In the above image, only the icons are displayed in the cell range from B1:B10. The user can change the check marks colour, bold, font size, alignment and various formatting options based on their preference.

Summary

From the above tutorial, the different methods of how to insert a checkmark using excel default functions are mentioned. Using this method, the checkmark can be inserted into the data set in excel.