Independent Radio Buttons

Larry is using Excel to put together a way to track his performance at bowling. As part of his system, he would like to use the Controls toolbox to add radio buttons (sometimes called option buttons) to his worksheet, one for each of the ten pins. He would like a way to click on the radio buttons representing the pins he left standing after the first roll of the ball.

The problem is that radio buttons are not designed to allow multiple selections. When there are multiple radio buttons in a group, only one of the radio buttons in that group can be selected at a time. (This would be acceptable if Larry never left more than one pin standing after each roll, but such an expectation may be unreasonable.)

There are two options that can be tried. The easiest is to use check boxes instead of radio buttons. By design, check boxes are independent of each other; you can click one or all of them—it doesn't matter. You can easily arrange the check boxes in a triangular pattern to simulate the position of the bowling pins. To insert a checkbox, follow these instructions:

1. Display the Developer tab of the ribbon. (If you don't see the Developer Tab, you'll have to make it visible in Excel Options through the Customize Ribbon option.)
2. In the Controls Group, click on Insert.
3. A drop-down list appears. Select the checkbox from Form Controls and place the checkbox anywhere you want on the worksheet. (This is also where you find radio buttons.)

The drawback to this approach is that the check boxes are square. If this aesthetic does not meet your expectations, then the second approach might better. This approach involves putting each radio button into its own group.

Remember that only one radio button per group can be selected at a time. When you add radio buttons to a worksheet, they default to the same group, the name of which matches the worksheet name. As you add each radio button you could right-click on it and display its properties. One of the properties is GroupName; change this to something like Pin1, Pin2, etc. As long as each radio button uses a different group name, they will be considered independent of each other.

Even so, there is an advantage to using check boxes instead of radio buttons—a huge advantage. Check boxes can be selected and then deselected; radio buttons cannot. Thus, you can click once on a check box to select it and a second time to deselect it. If you try this with radio buttons, it won't work—once a radio button is selected, it is selected for good. This isn't that big of a deal if you have multiple radio buttons in the same group—if you make a mistake in clicking one, just click on another to undo it. If you configure the properties so there is one radio button per group, then you can only select that single radio button in each group; you cannot undo it.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11974) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Independent Radio Buttons.