Although Google Docs is a powerful document-creation tool, it doesn’t offer the ability to create a checklist. I won’t blame Google for this, after all, Google Docs isn’t a to-do list app. However, some of us still need the feature for particular reasons, for example, a teacher may need to create a checklist for students to update project progress.

If you are looking to insert a checkbox in Google Docs, then I know a workaround that may help. Below you’ll find step-by-step instructions to make an interactive checklist in Google Docs.

Create a checklist in Google Docs

Google Docs may not have an interactive checklist feature, but it does offer the ability to create a list with non-interactable empty checkboxes. So first we need to create a checkbox list, here’s how:

1. Create the list that you would like to checkmark with each item in a separate line.

2. Now highlight the list and click on the “upside down arrow” next to the “Bulleted list” option at the top-right corner.

3. Here select the checkbox list option (the third one).

There you go, your checklist will be created with empty checkboxes next to it.

How to mark the checklist

Although the checklist has been created, it’s non-interactable, and clicking on the checkboxes won’t mark them. Here’s the workaround to mark those checkboxes:

1. Double-click on the checkbox that you would like to mark to select it.

2. Now right-click on it and select the “tick mark” icon from the menu.

That’s it, that checkbox will be turned into a tick mark indicating that the item has been marked. You can repeat this process to tick-mark the items in the checklist as needed.

To conclude

The above method might not be very intuitive, but it works perfectly fine if you must create a checkbox list in Google Docs. If you are creating the checklist for other people to interact, do remember to tell them the process to mark the checklist as I have told above.

If you know any other way to insert a checklist in Google Docs, share it with us in the comments below.