Using CHECKBOXES in Excel v Google Sheets - Which is better?!

 In the good ol' days it was Lotus 1-2-3 as Goliath with Excel as the David.

Now Microsoft Excel is the 800-pound gorilla in terms of marketshare and Google Sheets is barely nipping at its heels. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN EXCEL IS ACTUALLY BETTER!

There are definitely areas where Excel shines (the sheer capacity/size of the potential spreadsheet, etc).

But there are a LOT of areas where Google Sheets is just SO much better.

Did you ever try to create a bunch of checkboxes in a spreadsheet? I need to create a template for my organization so people can track a whole bunch of tasks. I figured it would be trivial so I looked it up and found a bunch of sites explaining how to do this in Excel (we are a Microsoft shop so this made sense). It seemed so complicated, requiring either a very labor-and-time-intensive process of manually editing each checkbox or else requiring writing Visual Basic code to make it happen.

Really?! To make a bunch of checkboxes for a simple task list?!

Then I explored what the difference is with Google Sheets and found this article.

https://www.automateexcel.com/how-to/insert-multiple-checkboxes/

Let me sum up:

Microsoft Excel

1. Go deep into advanced settings to add the Developer option to your ribbon
2. Click on insert / tools / checkbox
3. Click somewhere in your spreadsheet to add the checkbox
4. Carefully resize and position to fit nicely where you want it to go (typically in the center of a cell)
5. Right-click on that checkbox and go into properties
6. Change the text and type in a cell to link to
7. Want to add another? Go back to step #2 and do it all over again. Yes, you can copy/paste or use the fill handle to make steps 3 & 4 a little bit faster, but ultimately you need to do all that work for every single checkbox. Adding 1000 - plan on an hour or so of mind-numbingly boring work!

Google Sheets

1. Click in the cell where you want the checkbox
2. Click on insert and checkbox - DONE!
3. You want to add 1000? Instead of clicking in one cell in step 1 select all 1000 cells and then insert - THAT'S IT!

Come on, Excel! You can do better than that!

(There's a lot of other areas that Excel could learn from Google Sheets - this one just so totally blew me away that I had to say something.)