There are many ways to apply form controls in Excel. They can be used to make selections and trigger simple calculations, or to provide a basic interface that allows a user to interact with the workbook data.

 

When using form controls in your workbook, keep in mind that one type of form control may be better suited for a task than another. Here are a few examples to give you a better idea of what you can do with form controls.

 

 

This is a group box control, containing two radio button (option button) controls. Radio buttons are used when you want to make a mutually exclusive selection, if you select one radio button, any others will be deselected. The group box control allows you to have different groups of radio buttons for different purposes. If radio buttons are in a group box, selecting one will only deselect the other radio buttons in the same group box, rather all other radio buttons.

 

This image will give you a better idea of what is going on. With the 10 year button selected, the cost of the warrantee changes to 350. You can see the value returned from the radio button control in cell F11. Now, look at the formula for cell D11 in the formula bar. If the value in F11 = 1 (meaning the 5 year radio button is selected) 200 will be displayed. If the value in F11 is not 1, 350 will be displayed.

 

 

In this example, there are three check box controls. Check boxes return a true or false value indicating if they have been checked or not. You can see that a table and two chairs have been selected with the checkboxes, and the total is 275 dollars.

 

 

Here, you can see how the checkboxes work. The true and false values from the check boxes are entered in E1:E3.

 

Cells F1:F3 contain if functions that display the values from column D corresponding to the checkboxes. If the corresponding value in column E is true, the value in column D will be shown, if not, zero will be shown.

 

Cell B13 sums the values in F1:F3 for a total.

 

 

This is an example of a combo box control. The combo box allows you to select a given month from a drop list. When a selection is made, the profit for that month is shown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This image shows how the combo box works. Notice the VLOOKUP function in the formula bar.

 

When a month is selected from the combo box, Excel puts the index value of the month in the combo box cell link G1.

 

Cells E1:G21 contain a lookup table with profit figures for each month.

 

Cell D13 contains a VLOOKUP formula that looks up the index value from G1 in the lookup table. VLOOKUP then displays the value in column 3 of the look up table corresponding to the index.