There are many special characters in the standard Windows font set that are sometimes very nice and useful to use in an Excel sheet:
- all kinds of stars to visualize ratings
- various types of arrows to display dynamics, growth or decline
- people icons to illustrate the population or the number of employees
- symbols of various objects (cars, planes, books) to show sales volume, etc.
In Microsoft Excel, a similar trick can be performed using the function SYMBOL (CHAR), which can display a character by its code:
=SYMBOL(Code)
where Code is a number between 0 and 255, the Windows internal character code.
Note that characters with the same code may look different in different fonts. Therefore, to display the desired icon, you need to know the name of the font and the character code in it. The easiest way to determine this is with a small table that you can make yourself in a couple of minutes and then use it as a reference:
All cells in column B are set to Arial, column C is set to Webdings, and so on. So the same function SYMBOL (CHAR) shows us the characters with the given codes in each font.
Please note that the first three dozen codes are reserved in all fonts for system needs and are not displayed as meaningful characters. But the rest you can play around with.
You can also select on the tab Insert Command Symbol (Insert — Symbol), set the desired font and view the code of the required character in the lower part of the window:
This is how, for example, you can visualize an increase or decrease in sales using characters with codes 233 and 234 from the Wingdings font and a simple function check IF (IF):
You can optionally set the color of the arrows using conditional formatting.
Or you can visually display, for example, the number of employees in each branch of the company, using the little man symbol (code 128 in the Webdings font) and the function REPEAT (REPT), which can repeat the given character x times:
- Minicharts in Excel Sheet Cells
- How to make arrows in cells to show dynamics, growth or fall
- Video tutorial on conditional formatting in Excel