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Autopopulate a Checkbox in Word 2013 Using IF Statement


I would like to auto populate/tick a checkbox in Word 2013 when the conditions are met for the following IF statement:

IF <<Case_FilingDate>>="true" "This box is checked." "This box is not checked." 

What I do want:

  • When the statement is true the checkbox is automatically populated/ticked.

What I do not want:

  • The statement "This box is checked" to appear or the statement "This box is not checked" to appear.
  • The user to manually check the box.

Solution

  • The usual way to approach this is to include the "checked" and "unchecked" boxes as static font characters in the If field result sets. So the (fully expanded) field code would look like this

    { IF { MergeField Case_FilingDate } = true "[Symbol]" "[Symbol]" }
    

    In order to insert the checkboxes where I've typed the [Symbol] placeholders Insert->Symbol can be used. The two characters shown in the screen shot (below) I found in the font Wingdings 2.

    The screen-shot shows how I created a bookmark (for the test, since I don't have the merge data), set that value, tested the value in the If field, and then at the bottom the If field result for the false value.

    enter image description here

    A note for anyone reading this who would want a checkbox that can be checked: This would not be possible because the control is nested in a field.