How to Make a Checklist in Google Docs

A checklist is a list of things that can be checked off individually when completed or noted. In a checklist, there is a checkbox for each list item that you can check or uncheck. This post will show you how to make a checklist in Google Docs.

You may also be interested in How to use Google Sheets Checkbox – [6 Examples]. That post explains various applications in the Google Sheets checkbox, including a to-do list.

However, at the time of writing this post, Google Docs does not have such an interactive element (a checkbox) to create a checklist as in the Google Sheets.

This post will show you how to make a checklist in Google Docs itself and using Google Keep.

Make a checklist in Google Docs itself

To do this, we are going to use Google Docs Bulleted List.

Step 01: Create the list

First of all, you need to create a list. When creating the list, start every list item in a new line.

Then go to,

Format > Bullets & numbering > Bulleted list, and select Lower Right shaded white Square (❑) option.

(You can also use the bulleted list option in the Google Docs toolbar)

Step 02: Check and uncheck list items

You can use Check Mark (✓) to mark a list item as checked.

To assign a check mark to a list item,

  1. Fires, double click on the square mark (❑) to select only the square mark of the list item you want to change.
  2. Now, right-click on the selected square. Then chose the Check Mark (✓) from the popup dialog box.
  3. Repeat above 1 & 2 on all other list items that you want to mark as checked.

You have to replace the Check Mark (✓) again with a Square Mark (❑) to uncheck a checked list item,

To Uncheck,

  1. Double click on the Check Mark to select it
  2. Right-click on the select Check Mark
  3. Click on the More Bullets button in the popup window
  4. Type “Square” in the search box of the “Insert special characters” pop-up window
  5. Then click on the Lower Right shaded white Square (❑) symbol in the search results box. Then close the popup window.

If you want to uncheck another item, follow the above steps 1 to 3 and then select the “Recent characters”. That way, you can easily access the recently used symbols.

Create the checklist in Google Keep and Insert it into Google Docs

The method explained above, to Make a Checklist In Google Docs, is not interactive. Toggle the checked and unchecked state of the checkbox is not the way we wanted.

In that case, you can use Google Keep to create an interactive and sharable checklist. You can easily insert that checklist into Google Docs whenever you need it. Google Keep is a free Note Taking app by Google. You can access it from the side panel of Google Docs or from https://keep.google.com.

Step 01: Create a Checklist in Google Keep

If already have your checklist typed in Google Docs, you can follow the steps given below to move them into Google Keep.

  1. Click on the Show side panel arrow located in the bottom right corner of Google Docs to open it.
  2. Then click on the Keep icon. This will launch Google Keep from the Right side of Google Docs.
  3. Click the Take a note… button.
  4. Then cut and paste your list title to the Title text box in Google Keep.
  5. Next, cut and paste the list items in the text box just below the title text box (text box with the hint “Take a note…”)
  6. Click Done.
  7. Click the menu ( ) icon inside the note you just created.
  8. Then click the Open in Keep Open in Link icon small 1 option. It will open a new browser tab, and your new note will open inside the Google Keep dashboard.
  9. Click the menu ( ⋮ ) icon in the middle of the bottom section of the popup window. And select the “Show checkboxes” option. It will add checkboxes to your list items.
  10. Then, close the popup window (the note you created) and go back to Google Docs.
  11. Then you can see your checklist in the sidebar also updated accordingly.
  12. Now you can check and uncheck the list items from the side panel.

Step 02: Insert Google Keep checklist to Google Docs

  1. Open Google Keep in the Sidebar panel of Google Docs.
  2. Choose the checklist to be inserted from the Google Keeps in the sidebar panel.
  3. Click the menu ( ) icon and select the “Add to document” option to add this checklist to Google Docs. It will add the checklist to the Google Docs.

Now you can see it has added strikethrough formatting to the checked items in the list.

Advantages of using Google Keep to Make a Checklist In Google Docs

  • Using this method, you can create an interactive checklist in Google Docs.
  • You can share your checklist with others, and they can check or uncheck the list item depending on their progress.

However, your checklist is not automatically updated in Google Docs. You have to replace the checklist every time you make changes to the checklist in Google Keep.

Wrapping Up

In this post, we discussed two methods to Make a Checklist In Google Docs.

In the first method, we created the checklist using the features of Google Docs itself. The disadvantage of this method is that it is not easy to toggle the checked and unchecked states of the list.

In the second method, we created the checklist in Google Keep. This method has several advantages compared to the first method. You can even share the checklist with others and ask them to check or uncheck the list item depending on their progress. However, the list status is not automatically updated in Google Docs. You need to replace the old list with the updated list using the “Add to document” option provided in Google Keep.

You can use either of these two methods to make a checklist in Google Docs depending on your requirement.

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