Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Entering Fractions In Your Text
While it’s true that you can insert fraction symbols from the Symbol dialog box into your cell’s text, it’s faster and easier to produce those symbols by using the keyboard as you are typing your text.
Here are three examples that show how you can use the keyboard to enter the common fractions for one-fourth, one-half, and three-fourths in your non-numeric text entries. Each sentence is a little different but you’ll quickly get the idea.
Example 1 text for the one-fourth:
The fraction symbol for one-fourth is ¼.
You enter (without the square brackets):
The fraction symbol for one-fourth is [Alt+0188].
Example 2 text for one-half:
½ of 10 is 5.
You enter (without the square brackets):
[Alt+0189] of 10 is 5.
Example 3 text for three-fourths:
My car's gasoline tank is ¾ full.
You enter (without the square brackets):
My car's gasoline tank is [Alt+0190] full.
Hi Tom,
Good tip. I use this approach for things like currency symbols I don’t have on my keyboard too :
£ = ALT + 0163
€ = ALT + 0128
¥ = ALT + 0165
or maths symbols
÷ = ALT + 0247
± = ALT + 0177
µ = ALT + 0181
They only work if you use the numeric keypad though and you must type the leading 0 in. Do yours work if you use the numbers above the letters on the keyb?
Regards
Phil
Thanks Philip, and thanks for visiting my Excel blog!
Great post Tom; love the simplicity in your posts.
Phil, to answer your question; I too work on a laptop which doesn;t have a numeric keypad. The workaround is to activate the on screen keyboard – hold the alt key on the laptop keyboard and select the numbers from the virtual keypad. It worked for me.
Tom, I tried the alt + number combinations for many numbers and noted that it matches the values that the CHAR function generates with the same numbers (though not for all number values). Any thoughts on this…?
Thanks,
Adi
Thanks a lot for your comment Adi, and for following myh page. Two items:
(1)
Are you sure your laptop does not have a numeric keypad? Most do, but they are hard to identify sometimes. Usually I see them in the alpha keys with numbers on those same keys, which act like numbers when you press a Function key for that laptop to toggle between the ability for those dual purpose keys to produce a letter (more prominently displayed on the key usually) or the tinier number those keys also display.
(2)
Yes, you are right, there is a correlation between tke keystrokes and the characters they produce with the CHAR function. Take a look at this link:
http://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm
Next, open up a new workbook and in cell A1 enter the formula =CHAR(ROW()) and copy that formula down to cell A255.
You can see the correlation with those ASCII characters and the CHAR function. For example, Alt+0247 produces the division operator sign ÷ and you can see that the same character ÷ is in cell A247.
Here’s another link with info about the ASCII table:
http://www.asciitable.com/
good job
Thanks very helpful
thanks