In this article, we’ll cover 5 ways to insert check mark in excel, format excel check mark, check mark keyboard shortcut, counting check mark symbol in excel and much more.

Firstly, you should know there are two kinds of tick marks in excel. A check mark and a checkbox.

Excel Check Mark vs. Excel Check Box

A check mark is a special symbol (✓) that can be inserted in any cell. This also stands for “yes” or to represent “true”. The check mark symbol acts as regular text, we can format it i.e. change color, font size etc. Also, cross mark (x) is used for opposite purpose to denote “No” or “false”.

A check box is a type of tick in symbols that acts like an option to select or deselect. We can either check or uncheck the check box by clicking on it. This tick mark symbol acts as an object meaning when we delete the cell the checkbox may not delete. It’s not fixed to any cell so we can drag and drop it anywhere in the sheet. If you’re looking to learn to work with this type of tick mark then read how to insert a check box in excel.

Checkboxes are used very frequently while building interactive dashboards while Excel check mark is used in reports.

Let’s now look at how to make a checkmark in excel.

Copy & Paste to insert check mark in excel

This is the easiest method. Just copy the below check mark symbol and paste it in Excel.

Copy the check mark symbol, go to an excel cell. Double click the cell or press F2 and paste the check mark symbol (CTRL + V)

✔

Now you can copy and paste it as many times you want. This works best when there are only a few cells where you have to insert the symbol but it’s better to use a formula when inserting it in 10s or 100s of cells.

Check Mark keyboard shortcut. Wingdings checkmark

Now the first thing you need to do is change the font. Yes it seems odd but trust me, change your font to Webdings or Wingdings 2.

Here are keyboard shortcut for check marks Wingdings & Webdings:

The way is works is, that the Wingdings 2 & Webdings font has built-in capability to insert check mark by using a keyboard shortcut. This is also known as wingdings checkmark.

Make a check mark in Excel using Symbol Feature

This is also a very common way to put a check mark in excel.

1. Select the cell where you want to insert a check mark.
   
   
2. Go to Insert tab, under symbols group select Symbol.
   
   
   
3. In Symbols dialog box, open drop down menu of Font box. Select “Segoe UI Symbol” and under Sybset select ‘Dingbats’. You can now see some tick marks, select the one you like and hit Insert.
   
   
   
4. Now the tick mark has been inserted in the cell.
   

To insert more check marks just copy the inserted one and paste it in other cells or just drag to other cells to copy. By selecting ‘Segoe UI Symbol’ it gives us the ability to insert check mark in excel across major fonts (Arial, Time Now, Calibri, Verdana)

How to insert check mark in Excel using CHAR Formula

If you like working with formulas then just type =CHAR(252)

This will insert a check mark in excel. Do make sure to use this formula, you have to first change your font to Wingdings.

Because when we use CHAR(252), Excel return ANSI character (ü). Under wingdings font this character represents check mark symbols so the font converts it to a check mark. You can use the different variations of CHAR Formula to add different check mark symbol.

The advantage of using a formula is you can combine it with other functions like IF to create scenarios where once a certain condition is met then only a checkmark will appear. For example: we have a dataset as below and we want to put a check mark in excel cells where the employee sales has crossed $50000.

We’ll use the following formula. =IF(B2>50000, CHAR(252),CHAR(251))

This is useful in reporting where the check marks are dependent on certain conditions. Do change the font to Wingdings before you try this.

How to add check mark in Excel using AutoCorrect

If you type check mark in excel everyday then this method is best for you. Excel AutoCorrects misspelled words automatically. But don’t worry it’s not as terrible as AutoCorrect on iPhone.

1. Go to File tab and select Options.
   
   
   
2. In Options dialog box, select Proofing. Now select ‘AutoCorrect Options’ button.
   
   
   
3. In the opened dialog box, do the following:
   1. Write CHMARK in Replace
      
   2. Copy & paste ✔ (This symbol) in With field

      

      Click Add then OK.

Now go to any cell and type CHMARK. Excel will automatically change it to check mark symbol.

Do keep in mind the following things to use this effectively:

1. The value in Write field is case sensitive, so if you type chmark it’ll not change to check mark symbol.
2. The changes might all get applied to other Microsoft Office applications like Word, Powerpoint etc.
3. Also while typing if you insert any other text/number before or after CHMARK it’ll get not get converted to check mark symbol if there is no space. Example: ‘45CHMARK’ will not get converted while ‘45 CHMARK’ will get converted to ‘45 ✔’

Do learn about Excel AutoCorrect to understand the functionality and its working better.

Conditional Formatting to make a check mark in Excel

We can use conditional formatting to make a check mark in Excel based on certain cell value.

We have the following data set of sales made by each employee. Now we want to put a check mark if sales made by an employee is more than $50000 and put a cross mark is it’s less than $50000.

1. In cell C2 type =B2 and then drag the formula to the rest of the cells. Now if sales figure get changed in column B it’ll get reflected in column C.
   
   
   
2. Select cells of column C. Go to Home tab, select Conditional Formatting and click on New Rule.
   
   
   
3. In the dialog box, click on ‘Format Style’ to open drop down and select ‘Icon Sets’.
   
   
   
4. Under Icon Style, select cross mark and check mark symbol.
   
   
   
5. Check ‘Show Icon only’ in the dialog box. This would hide the numbers and only the symbols will be visible.
   
   
   
6. Now under Icon settings, change Type from Percent to Number. Under Value field add the necessary details as shown below.
   
   
   
7. Hit Ok.
   

Now look at the dataset, Excel has added check a check mark in front of every employee who made sales of $50000+.

Formatting Tick Mark Symbol in Excel

As mentioned before check mark is just like a text value. We can change it’s size, color & other properties.

Just select the cells and go play with the font settings, color etc. to see how it changes.

This is used when you only have a few values but if you have 10s or 100s of tick mark then it’s better to use Conditional Formatting to format tick marks like check marks & cross marks. See learn this in the next step.

Format Tick Mark using Conditional Formatting

This is how tick marks would look like after being formatted.

In column C we have used a combination of CHAR & IF to insert check mark & cross mark where the sales is above $50000. In column D we have used conditional formatting to improve visual appearance.

1. Select the cells under column D (or where you want to insert the tick mark using conditional formatting)
   
   
2. Go to Home tab, select Conditional Formatting and click on New Rule.
   
   
   
3. In the dialog box, select ‘Use a formula to determine which cells to format’. In the formula filed, type =C2=CHAR(252) and click on Format
   
   
   
4. In Format Cells dialog box, under Fill select the color you want. This will be the background color of the cell over which the tick mark will appear.
   
   
   
5. Now go to Font tab and select color as you wish. This will be the color of tick mark. Click Ok.
   
   
   
6. Hit OK.

If you followed the above steps, you would see something like this.

Now repeat the above steps to add formatting for cross marks. Change the formula to =C2=CHAR(251) in step 3 and the formatting in step 4 & 5.

Counting Check Marks

Now let’s say I want to find out how many employees have made sales over $50000 I can simply count the total number of check marks. We can do this with a combination of COUNTIF & CHAR.

In the cell where you want the count value to come, just type =COUNTIF($C$2:$C$10, CHAR(252))

Remember this formula will only work when we’re using ANSI code 252 to get check mark meaning our font is Wingdings.

Conclusion

That was all about how to insert check mark in excel.

I hope this article was helpful to you and explained you all about check mark symbol, wingdings checkmark value and working with tick mark.

If you have any questions or tips, I’d love to hear them in the comment section below.