Ultimate Checklist in Google Sheets

Beginner

About this Tutorial

how to create and customize checklists using Google Sheets. I show you how to add check boxes, headers, and formatting to make your checklists visually appealing. I also explain how to use conditional formatting to create a progress bar and add fun elements like easter eggs. Watch this video to learn how to make the ultimate checklist and feel free to suggest more features for future videos!

Sheet Resources

Access Sheet

Copy Sheet

Preview Sheet

Featured Formulas

COUNTA() COUNTIF() IF() SPARKLINE()

Video Transcript

<div>00:00 In a bunch of TikTok videos I've made, people are loving the checklist information, creating checklists, making them really pop out, do cool stuff with them. 00:10 So in this video, I'm going to try to combine a lot of the checklist ideas. We're going to go to sheet.new, create one from scratch, and I'll show you how I do that. 00:19 And I think, Parts of this may be applicable to various parts of what you're doing.

Right now, I'm going to go create a blank background, and I'm going to only use, let's delete a bunch of cells , because we want to just focus on creating a cool checklist , which is going to be super simple. 00:40 First let's add the check boxes. Insert, check box, add a bunch of check boxes. I want to add a, like a header up here, if it's Monday, Tuesday, or like a planning for a certain thing. 00:55 I'm going to use with orange, no, orange, let's use, I'm going to use this purple.

I want to get a little more space, insert rows above, insert row below, and then we're going to change that to green, this green background. 01:14 I'm going to insert one more column to the left, delete all that stuff in it, make it a little bit smaller, but still make it green. 01:20 Have this header pop out. Let's do a couple things to make it look good right away. We're going to view, show, and we're going to uncheck grid lines. 01:30 We're going to still have everything selected, change it to Carla.

I'm going to use the text Carla, but in the header , I think I'm going to use code Forta. Uh, we're going to merge these real quick. I'm going to make it a little extra room. 01:51 We're also going to take all of these items, give them a little extra room, make sure they are vertically aligned in the middle. 01:55 The check box can stay as a check box. We're going to make that smaller. This items though, let's actually merge . 02:02 No, we don't need to merge that. We just need to make each of these items bigger. We did do this purple. 02:09 So let's do the exact same purple here.

But the next one, we are going to do one shade darker. I think that's one shade. 02:19 And now we can copy paste this. And oops. Do it all the way down. Let's add one more line there. 02:29 Perfect. Let's add a little shade of green down here just to have a little in spot. If we want we want to call this, let's call this Monday all caps just for design sake. 02:45 We're going to put in the center. We're also making much bigger. That's nice. Bold it. Give it a nice bold there. 02:54 Each of these items should also be in the center. Yeah. Middle and then left aligned.

So on Monday, we will get do some write a blog. 03:05 We might make this bigger now. Let's make this. Let's go up to 15. Great. That looks good. It is black text I think still. 03:15 So what we're going to do is we're going to change it to the not the very darkest but a dark purple. 03:19 You want to do that as well here changes text to a dark purple. Oh, yeah. And then command Y and do that all the way down. 03:31 I think on this one exactly the same text dark purple. What we want to do Facebook post maybe looks nice Thanks for watching! 03:41 It looks a little.

I'm wondering if the shade is a little wrong. This shade of text is definitely wrong. Let's bring that down to that dark purple. 03:53 Sweet! Okay, we are. Let's name the sheet. Oh, now ultimate checklist . Designed. Bye, better sheets. Let's call it that. Better. 04:05 It's not just one sheet. It's better sheets.

Alright we want to pop it out of the background a little bit more, just for particularly these colors don't really do much. 04:17 What I'm going to do is on the border, we're going to make a thick border, but only on the other side. 04:23 On the bottom and the right side, we also do want to make this the absolute darkest purple, which is here. Let's do that again on the right and the left. We're going to click the top border, but we're going to change it to the thinnest and on the left side. 04:38 So now when I move my cursor, we'll see that this is popped off a little bit.

Right, that little border just makes it a little, it gives it a little border. 04:49 We're going to do exactly the same thing, but on the entire checklist here, not on each individual item. We're going to go thinnest is on the top and the left. 04:58 We're going to click on the right, but we're going to change it to the thickest one. . And the right bottom and the right side. 05:05 Great. Now we have a nice looking checklist , right? We might even make these depending on how much you want to write here. 05:13 We can make this wider and write more stuff.

Wondering if we want to make this more dynamic. Like maybe if we've checked off an item, we're going to maybe change it. 05:30 What I like to do is change it a lot. So let's go up to format , conditional formatting . Let's do some conditional formatting here. 05:40 Apply to the range . We want to apply a range to Thank you. E4 colon yeah, actually c4. We want to keep it this, but you'll see why later. 05:54 We're going to make it the darkest black background, and we're going to make it the lightest white not white purple. 06:03 Text.

And now our format cell is going to be not anything. It's going to be custom formula equals b4 equals true. 06:18 For real. And now you'll see, with this applied range , it only is checking off this b4, or not checking off, it's changing the b4. 06:31 What we may need to do is add a dollar sign in front of the b, and this is really hard to Mm. 06:43 But why is it that it's, is, true? Mm, what's going on? Maybe we need to do this. Or it was correct. 07:10 Maybe it was correct with the true. There we go. It was. I don't know why it was in red here. 07:16 Perfect.

So when this dollar, let me explain this dollar sign thing. If you don't know yet, then listen. If you do know why the dollar sign exists, then skip a minute here. 07:29 This applied range is going to be we're going to apply the range , but this custom formula is going to be relative. 07:38 If we change this B to absolute , Allude. Both of the range B and C column will now look at the B column. 07:49 But if we do not have it absolute , the B column will look at the B column, the C column will look at the C column. 07:55 So right now, it's relative.

Adding the dollar sign is, it's absolute . So perfect. Let's change this as well to C 17, C4 to C 17. 08:08 And I think now with that, it will do it for each individual one. So now each time we select this, it's changing where it's looking. 08:18 It's, it's keeping the B column, but it's changing the number here. So hopefully that makes a little . . Bit of sense. 08:24 Play around with it because then I think it'll start to dawn on you how this works.

If you've never done conditional formatting before with a custom formula , make sure you have an equal sign at the beginning. 08:35 This is probably one of the strangest things I've ever seen. I always have to add this equal sign at the beginning to say this whole custom formula is equal. 08:43 We'll do this, this is the custom formula . I don't, I don't know why they do that. But yeah, click done. 08:53 And we have now a really cool checked off thing. But let's see, we could make this even cooler, right? . .

We can, if we have, let's say add a progress bar to Monday, I'm gonna insert a row below. 09:12 I'm gonna change this border. I love progress bars. We are really making the ultimate checklist here. Clear out that. Do bottom left, top. 09:25 Change it again, and I want to have a little progress bar here. I'm gonna make it a little smaller so as not to see what's going on. 09:35 I'm gonna merge these, and now we're gonna do equals. What can we do? Sparkline . Thank you. Data is going to be count if b5 now to be 18. 09:56 Our data , let's see, we have to do this in curly brackets.

We have to do a bar graph , is it? 10:04 Chart type comma bar and then max is what's 18 minus 5. That's 13. There we go, 13. 13. But actually we can do, we don't want to do the count all as an absolute number . 10:30 It's going to be a count all be c5 colon c18. So however many items there are, that's going to be the maximum. 10:44 In it. What do we got? We got count if expected two arguments . Let's look at that again. Count if we're, oh, we need to say true. 10:53 Sparkline expected one in two arguments , but got three arguments . Double check this. Do, do, do, do, do, do. Huge.

Change that. 11:05 I was like, ah, reference error . Sparkline parameter two has mismatched column size expected two actual four. Sparkline . See. Huh? Mismatched column size. 11:27 Eyes. All right, this is so silly. This middle the limiter should be a semicolon. That's what I need to do there. 11:51 Oh, we got a full graph . Let's uncheck all of these. 50%. Oh, perfect. It's working. So now we go finish. 12:03 What is this check? Let's add number three. Ooh, we need to change the text on this. There we go. Okay, that's a third. 12:15 That's two thirds. And that's done.

But when it's done, we want to do something else, right? Maybe instead of if If, And so this part can only be do if count if, count if is equal to count all, C5, colon C18. 12:42 If that's true, oh, this is supposed to be equals. If they arch the true, we'll just do done. And if not, then we have the progress bar . 12:56 We'll make this a little bit smaller. And then we add all tasks done. Great. So, we have this bar. Let's change the color because that orange sucks, right? 13:12 How we change the color, go to our sparkline , add another semi colon.

I think it's gonna be color one comma. 13:21 Let's change it to. You red or, let's say green. Perfect. It's green now. We can, I wonder if, is there purple? 13:41 Oh yeah, nice. Purple's way better here. Oh yeah, wait, all test done. . But if we add another, add another task. 13:52 Boom. I'll test it on. We have a nice little progress bar . Perfect. This is really getting to be the ultimate checklist here. 14:01 If you watch this video and you want to see more things added to this video, let me know.

I'm happy to add more to the ultimate checklist . 14:10 I want to sort of add a little easter egg here. If, if this, if your third one is true, I want to say, ooh, fire. 14:24 This one's that to be a little. A little easter egg to show up. Ooh, fire. And if we get to the fifth one, if be, or not even the fifth one, be 11. 14:38 What do we want to show here? Let's show a little rocket. Let's add, make these. Much bigger. Let's add a strong thing, if be nine. 14:55 Let's add a strong.

And now, we can even, we get there, ooh, we got a little strong, ooh, we're strong, so strong. 15:09 We could be like, oh, we got a rocket. You know, we didn't make that big enough. We can center these a little to make them nicer. 15:17 Maybe, maybe that's nicer. I don't know. Center them. Oh, this one can be way bigger. Twenty five. But if we have not checked that off. 15:27 We don't get our Easter egg, so we can, ooh, we'll see. Strong, strong, strong if we get through all our tasks. 15:34 Thanks for watching the video. I hope this has become the ultimate checklist for you.

Get a copy. You're a better sheets member. 15:40 If you're watching this on bettersheets.co. Get a copy of it. Copy the sheet. Take it with you. Make it your own, make it your own colors. 15:49 Have a good one. Bye! Bye.</div>