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How do I search for symbols in Excel and Word?

Anonymous
2025-02-14T19:29:53+00:00

I have been trying and failing to find various special symbols in the symbols insertion sheet. I know their names, but can't figure how to look them up in Excel. So how would I go about searching for them in the program? I've tried looking up how to do it with little luck, and having to copy and paste it from the internet would get annoying over time. Thanks.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | Other | Windows

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  1. Andreas Killer 144.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-02-16T09:40:14+00:00

    I'm aware that I can just look up the symbols online and copy them down, but is there no way to just type something like 'alpha' and find any symbols with that in their name, such as what you can do with Google Drive's services?

    There's nothing similar in Excel, but Excel has a Autocorrection feature which you can use for your purpose.

    See File \ Options \ Proofing \ AutoCorrect Options...

    The settings in this tab apply to the input of cells. Make a new file and type (c) and a blank:

    If you look into the "Math. AutoCorrect" tab you'll see that \alpha is converted into α but the settings in that tab applies to the Formula equation editor only, did not work in cells.

    But if you add that replacement to the AutoCorrect tab you can type \alpha in a cell and get the alpha sign.

    Hope that helps.

    Andreas,

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-02-15T20:15:09+00:00

    I'm aware that I can just look up the symbols online and copy them down, but is there no way to just type something like 'alpha' and find any symbols with that in their name, such as what you can do with Google Drive's services?

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-15T20:07:06+00:00

    This page. I'm not sure what else you would call it. It's in the Insert tab.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-02-15T08:13:52+00:00

    Hi, Mateo Trivellini

    Thank you for using Microsoft products and posting them to the community.

    Is that what you are referring to? You can do a quick search online for Font and Character codes for those symbols and then make a table to hold the information:

    Or you can look up shortcut input methods like Alt+1234 is ╥ and you can search for similar inputs.

    I hope the above information can help you. Feel free to send a message if you need further help.

    Best wishes

    Aiden.C - MSFT |Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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  4. Andreas Killer 144.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-02-15T07:43:04+00:00

    What do you mean by "symbols insertion sheet"?

    In my opinion there is no such thing in Excel.

    Andreas.

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