A radio button (also known as an “option button” in Excel) is used to record the user’s selection from a list of options. Once an option is selected, other options are automatically deselected – which “forces” the user to select only one item from the list.
Radio buttons are great for setting up a survey or a questionnaire. It can also be used for filtering the contents of a dataset or charts in Excel.
How to Insert Radio Button in Excel
We will learn how to insert and edit radio buttons easily in 5 steps.
Step 1: Insert the first radio button in your Excel sheet.
To insert a radio button, we need to access the Developer tab.
If you can’t find it in your ribbon, you can add it by doing the following:
- Go to File >> More >> Options.
- The Excel Options menu will appear.
- Click Customize Ribbon.
- Check the Developer checkbox and click OK.
From the Developer tab, click Insert and go to the Form Controls section.
From there, select the “option button” (the rightmost button on top). See the screenshot below.
Hover your mouse onto the sheet and click anywhere you would like to insert the radio button.
And that’s it! You have your first radio button added to your sheet.
Step 2: Increase the size of the radio button.
Let’s resize the radio button to adjust its sensitivity to user selection.
Having bigger radio buttons make it easier for the user to select them. The user can click anywhere on the radio button’s caption (or even just the side of the text) to select it.
To increase its size, right-click on the radio button and press the ESC key to remove the menu that pops up.
Drag one of the circles that surround it and adjust the size according to your preference.
PRO TIP: Hold the ALT key as you resize the button. Doing so will help you easily have the button fit within the cells.
Step 3: Add more radio buttons.
Of course, a radio button can’t be on its own. It must have at least one more companion to make it work.
To add more radio buttons, you can do either of the following:
- Select the existing radio button and do a copy and paste by pressing CTRL + C and CTRL + V.
- Select the existing radio button and duplicate it by pressing CTRL + D as many times as needed.
- Select the cell(s) where the radio button resides and drag the fill handler down.
I prefer the third option as it makes it easier to create copies of the radio button.
Step 3: Edit the caption of the radio buttons.
Now, let’s change the caption of each of the radio buttons. Right-click on one of them and select Edit Text.
Type the appropriate caption and press ENTER.
Repeat the same steps until you have edited all the radio buttons in the sheet.
Step 4: Link the radio buttons to a cell.
To link the radio buttons to a cell, right-click one of the radio buttons and select Format Control.
The Format Object menu will appear. Click the arrow next to the Cell link textbox.
Next, click a cell on the sheet where you want to link the radio buttons (or where you want the selected option to appear).
The address of the selected cell will appear in the Format Object textbox.
Once you’re happy with it, click the arrow next to it.
You’ll be redirected back to the Format Object menu. Click OK to save these changes.
Now, it’s time to test the radio buttons. Try clicking on the radio buttons.
Notice that the selected option will appear on the cell set as the cell link.
Note that each radio button represents a numerical value – with the first one having “1” as the value.
What’s cool with Excel is that once you have set the Cell Link of one of the radio buttons, the rest of the radio buttons are automatically linked to the same cell. There’s no need to repeat the steps on the remaining ones.
Now, this feature is great if you only have one set of radio buttons in your sheet.
However, if you intend to add multiple sets, you will need to group the radio buttons so that each group will have its separate Cell Link.
Step 5: Group the radio buttons.
From the Developer tab, click Insert. Under the Form Controls, select the Group Box control (first item on the second row).
Go back to your sheet and drag the mouse over the radio buttons you want to group.
Once you release the mouse, the Group Box will be added.
Change the caption of the Group Box by clicking on the text twice and entering the appropriate caption.
You can also delete the text if you don’t need it (like what I did in the image below).
And that’s it! You have successfully grouped the radio buttons.
For the other set of radio buttons, don’t forget to update their Cell Links after grouping them.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The steps described above showed how to insert an Option Button Form Control.
If you want to be able to configure the text format of the option buttons (like the font size, type, and color) or specify their values, you will need to add an Option Button ActiveX Control.
ActiveX Controls gives you more freedom to configure these types of settings. However, this type of control requires a VBA Code for it to work.
If you don’t have any background in VBA Programming, you may need to settle with Form Controls. But hey — that’s still something to be proud of. You were able to make your sheet interactive with just a drag-and-drop. That’s a total plus!
Conclusion
As you can see, it’s so simple and easy to insert radio buttons in Excel. With just a few clicks, you can instantly make your sheet user-friendly with the help of these option buttons.