Marking task "Complete" with a checkbox?

Robert Hawkey

Hey everybody,

This should hopefully be pretty straight forward but I'm having trouble figuring this out. I'm trying to build out dashboards for my team that they can easily go in and check a box to mark a task complete. I've added a checkbox column into my sheet but now I need to figure out how to link that to my "Status" column. Is there a simple way to make this work across all tasks in my schedule?

Thanks

Rob

Paul Newcome

What other options do you have in your Status column? You would either need to account for all of them in a formula or have them all manual entry. If there is a formula in a cell, and someone manually changes it, the formula is erased.

Robert Hawkey

Status column has "Not Started", "In Progress", and "Complete" in a dropdown. If the box is checked I want the status column to automatically change the status to "Complete".

Paul Newcome

Ok. You would need to either automate the other statuses by working them into the same formula that automates "Complete" or you would need to leave it entirely manual.

If you would like to fully automate but need a little help getting it put together, feel free to let me know.

Robert Hawkey

Yeah, I don't know where to begin with the formula to make that happen.

Paul Newcome

We begin with establishing the criteria for each status option.

Do you have any date columns where people log their start and end dates for the task? If so, we could break it down with something along the lines of

If the box is checked or there is an end date - "Complete"

If there is an start date but no end date - "In Progress"

If both date fields are blank - "Not Started"

Once we establish the criteria for each status, we can build the formula from there.

Robert Hawkey

I build the schedules and establish start and end dates for all tasks. Team members report on their status compared to the agreed upon dates. Right now I'm manually updating the status field of all tasks based on their updates. The goal of this is to have them be able to see a list of their assigned tasks and check a box to indicate if it is done.

Paul Newcome

It is not going to work as you have outlined because manual entry will always override and delete a formula.

Robert Hawkey

If you could give me a basic formula that shows how to change a field based on the checkbox column I think I can work with that. Doesn't need to be specific to my situation.

Paul Newcome

=IF([Other Column]@row = "specific text", 1)