Insert Currency Symbols & Other Special Characters in Excel [Quick Tip]

Often, we need to input special symbols like €£¥©½» in to our Excel sheets. Now, how do we do that?

Simple, you can use Insert > Symbol to add several different kinds of symbols.

See this animation to understand how you can add symbols to an excel cell. (the file is kind of big, so give it a few seconds to load)

5 Bonus tips on using Symbols:

1. You can just double click on the character to insert it. No need to press Insert button.
2. You can quickly open insert symbol dialog by pressing ALT+I and then S. (related: 97 keyboard shortcuts to boost your excel mojo)
3. You can use the symbols in formulas too. For eg. you can show ? or ? or ? based on change of one value wrt to another. Like this:
   • =if(A1>A2, “↑”, if(A1<A2,”↓”,”↔”)) (related: in-cell charts)
4. Quickly access symbols to specific to currency, arrows or greek chars (if you are in to that sort of thing) by using the drop-down at top-right (see above demo).
5. Change the font to Wingdings / Webdings to see some useful and fun characters. You can spice dashboards or reports with these.

Symbols & Excel – See this stuff:

• Making Chart Legends better with Symbols
• Incell Dot Plots with Symbols & Formulas
• Use Spot Matrix Charts when comparing values
• Best Cities to find job – incell dashboard using symbols
• Displaying Symbols in Excel Chart Axis