Tutorial 05
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Tutorial 05 |
Displaying symbols |
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Adding Greek letters, math symbols, arrows etc in Excel |
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You will often find it convenient to display symbols such α, β γ, @± or ‰ within your worksheet.
=Mac
users: Select the international 
drop
down menu from the main menu bar and click show character pallet. Pick the
character you want and press insert. Hint: the
degree symbol is found under punctuation and lower case Greek letters are
found in the unicode view. Even better you can simply enter what you want
in the search window and hit return. For instance if you enter "degree" in
the search window and hit return you will be presented with a pallet of degree
symbols including degrees F and C.
PC users: Depending on which symbols you wish to display, select one of the two methods described below.
With
the first method you can simply change the font face to Symbol and
type the appropriate letter. For example, to display the Greek letter alpha, a,
first type the letter "a". Then on the Home Ribbon click the font drop down menu and change the font to "Symbol".
That's all there is to that method. It works for greek letters especially if you memorize the table below.
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Unfortunately not every character you will wish to use can be displayed with the above method. Some characters like, ° (degree), ±, × and ÷ must be displayed by using a alternative method
second method.
To get these and certain other characters to appear in your worksheet, press the <ALT> key while you use the numeric keypad to type in the appropriate numerical code. For example, in order to create the degree symbol ( ° ), press the <ALT> key while you type 0176 with the numeric keypad, not the number keys on the main keyboard. Below are some of the characters you can display with the <ALT>+number method. Good luck memorizing these codes
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Note that the numbers entered above
must be entered with the numeric keypad, not the main keyboard!
To the right is a worksheet example using the two methods described above to create symbols and Greek letters. Can you reproduce it?
The third method will permit access to any character in any language even Korean or Chinese script. Apple computers have a built in character viewer that can be accessed through an icon on the menu bar. Clicking it will drop down a menu permitting you to show the character viewer. Selecting Show Character Viewer opens a large dialog box containing virtually any thing you want.
You can select the type of character you are looking for from the list on the left of the menu.
There are a lot of characters here, so a character search is often more appropriate Type in what you are looking for in the search box at the bottom.
Here I am looking for the Greek letter Delta. Entering it into the search box brings up a sub menu presenting you with several options for the delta symbol. You simply select the one you want and click the insert button. The character appears in your document at the cursor location.
If you cant find it here it is not in common use on this planet.
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Copyright © 2000, St. Mary's College of Maryland. All Rights Reserved.
Please send comments, problems or request for topics to
Walter I. Hatch
wihatch@smcm.edu
January 14, 2012
