When you’re working inside a spreadsheet, it’s often useful to add symbols. These help clarify data and add visual interest to your sheets. Fortunately, Excel is full of symbols, and they’re very easy to add to any spreadsheet. Let’s learn how to add symbols in Microsoft Excel.
How to Add Symbols in Excel
Foreign currency signs. Mathematical characters. Emojis. What do they have in common? They’re all symbols, and you can add any of them to any spreadsheet. Excel has a full library of symbols that comes pre-installed. With a few clicks, you can add them to any cell.
To get started adding symbols of your own in Excel, go to the Insert tab. You’ll find this on Excel’s ribbon at the top of your screen. You’ll see a variety of options appear. On the right side, click on the Symbols dropdown.
Here, you’ll have two options: Equation and Symbol. Click on Symbol, and Excel will launch the Character Viewer menu. Here, you’ll see a vast assortment of symbol options, grouped by category.
At the top, you’ll see emojis. These are the fun faces and other designs we often use in text messaging. Plus, you’ll see categories for mathematics, currency, pictographs, punctuation, and much more.
Browse the collection of symbols, then click once on any of the thumbnails to see a preview of the symbol itself. Below, you’ll often see variations, which include bold and italic designs in many cases.
When you’re ready to add a symbol, click into the cell where you want to place it. Then, double-click on the symbol’s thumbnail in the Character Viewer menu. Excel will immediately add the symbol to the chosen spot.
From here, you can either add additional symbols or close out Character Viewer and resume working with your data. As you can see, Excel makes it easy to add symbols to your spreadsheets.
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