Add controls to cells in Numbers on Mac
You can add controls to table cells—including checkboxes, star ratings, sliders, steppers, and pop-up menus—that let you update the data in your table dynamically.
Add checkboxes or star ratings to cells
You can add checkboxes to cells to create checklists. A cell with a checkbox can only have a value of either 1 or “true” (selected) or 0 or “false” (unselected).
A star rating in a cell, which is useful for rating or ranking items in a list, can be zero to five stars. If you use a star rating in a formula, the rating is interpreted as its numerical value.
Select the cells you want to format.
In the Format
sidebar, click the Cell tab, then click the Data Format pop-up menu and choose Checkbox or Star Rating.Do any of the following:
Select or deselect a checkbox: Click it.
Select or deselect multiple checkboxes: Select the cells, then press 1 to select all checkboxes or 0 to deselect all checkboxes.
Toggle multiple checkboxes: Select the cells, then press the Space bar to change all checkboxes. The checkboxes are toggled based on the top-left checkbox in the selection. If that checkbox was selected, all checkboxes are deselected and vice versa.
Enter a rating: Select the cell, then click the dots in the cell.
Set the rating for multiple cells: Select the cells, then press 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 to set all ratings to that value. You can also set ratings halfway between two values, such as 1.5.
Increment or decrement the rating for multiple cells: Select the cells, then press to increment or - to decrement the values.
Add sliders or steppers to cells
Sliders and steppers allow you to vary the values in your cells (within a range) one at a time, to see how the variation affects your data or charts overall. You can specify the range of variation for the cells’ values.
Select the cells you want to format.
In the Format
sidebar, click the Cell tab, then click the Data Format pop-up menu and choose Slider or Stepper.Do any of the following:
Set the value displayed at the start of the slider’s or stepper’s range: Enter a value in the Minimum field.
Set the value displayed at the end of the slider’s or stepper’s range: Enter a value in the Maximum field.
Set the number of units between each stopping point on the slider or stepper: Enter a value in the Increment field.
Format cell data: Click the Format pop-up menu and choose an option, then use the additional controls to specify other formatting options (number of decimal places, and so on).
Add pop-up menus to cells
You can add a pop-up menu to a cell, then specify the items that appear in the pop-up menu.
Numbers recognizes menu items that are numeric values, including dates and durations, as well as text. Formulas can refer to cells where the pop-up menu is set to a numeric item.
Select the cells you want to format.
In the Format
sidebar, click the Cell tab.Click the Data Format pop-up menu and choose Pop-Up Menu.
If some or all of the cells you selected already contain data, the pop-up options that appear are the values from the selected cells, for up to 250 cells (checkboxes are interpreted as “true” or “false” text, and star ratings are assigned their numeric value between 0 and 5). You can edit these options if you want. Repeated values in the selected cells are treated as a single pop-up menu item. The pop-up menu in each cell is set to the cell’s original value.
If all of the cells you selected are empty, the pop-up options are placeholder items (“Item 1,” for example).
In the list of options that appears below Pop-Up Menu, double-click an item (a prefilled value or a placeholder), then type the text you want to appear in the pop-up menu.
Repeat this process for each item you want to change.
To add another item to the pop-up menu, click
below the list of pop-up options, then type the text you want to appear.You can add up to 250 pop-up menu items.
Specify how the pop-up menu appears:
Rearrange an item: Drag it up or down in the list of menu options.
Leave cells blank if no item has been chosen: Choose “Start with Blank” from the pop-up menu below the list of options.
Display the first item in the pop-up menu as the default entry for cells in which no item has been chosen: Choose “Start with First Item” from the pop-up menu.
Delete an item: Click it, then click
.
While navigating a table, you can select a cell with a pop-up menu, press the Space bar to open the menu, use the arrow keys to navigate the options, then press the Space bar to select a value.
Remove or change a control
You can remove the controls from table cells and make them empty, unformatted cells, or you can convert cells to a different format.
Select a cell or a range of cells.
Do one of the following:
Remove all content from the cells: Press Delete.
Change the type of control: In the Format
sidebar, click the Cell tab, then click the Data Format pop-up menu and choose a different option.When you change the selected Data Format option, the cell values are converted from one type to another. For example, if the cells originally contained pop-up menus and you convert them to text format, they retain their content as text. Or, if the cells originally contained steppers and you convert them to a number format, they retain their original values as static numbers.
Not all data types can be converted (for example, a list of textual items in a pop-up menu can’t be converted to a number format). If you try to convert to an incompatible cell format, the cell controls aren’t removed from the cell.