How to count checked checkboxes
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Total the ticked boxes in a checklist column.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | =COUNTIF(A2:A100,TRUE) | Excel checkboxes (Insert → Checkbox, 365) store TRUE/FALSE in the cell. |
| Google Sheets | =COUNTIF(A2:A100,TRUE) | Identical — Sheets checkboxes are TRUE/FALSE cells too. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =COUNTIF(A2:A100,TRUE()) | Same idea; LibreOffice writes booleans as TRUE()/FALSE(). |
How it works
Modern checkboxes are just a checkbox-shaped view of a TRUE/FALSE cell, so COUNTIF with TRUE counts the ticked ones — 2 in the sample. Progress percent is =COUNTIF(A2:A100,TRUE)/COUNTA(A2:A100), and since TRUE sums as 1, =SUMPRODUCT(--A2:A100) counts them too. If your boxes write custom values instead (Sheets lets you set them), count those values instead of TRUE.
Verified, not just documented
We ran =COUNTIF(A2:A4,TRUE()) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 2 — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned 2 for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.
Functions used
COUNTIF · TRUE — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.
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