the 'degree' symbol

[David French]

Does anyone have a good way of getting the 'degree' symbol into a series of
cells?
Either farenheit or celcius...doesn't matter...i just want the symbol.

Dave French

 

[JulieD]

Hi David

either insert / symbol - it's under the "symbol" font

or hold down ALT and type 0186

 

[Don Guillett]

123alt0186

 

[Guest]

Hi
You could try
=CHAR(176)

 

[Guillermo]

I think alt + 0176 is a better degree symbol than alt + 0186

remember to use the numeric keypad

guillemro

 

[Don Guillett]

0176 it is

 

[Guillermo]

well, I guess in excel is almost the same. I tried it in matlab (sometimes I
try to help in a couple of newgroups and get confused which one I'm looking
at), and 0186 is better because the 0176 shows as the ordinals symbol (with
a line at the bottom).

 

[Gord Dibben]

David

If you need the temperatures in number form for calcualtions you will have to
add a Custom Format rather than in-cell editing.

Format>Cells>Custom. Select the 0 format and click in dialog box to edit.

###.0(ALT + 0176)"F"

Steps...enter the ###.0 then on Numpad(gray keys) enter ALT + 0176 then "F" or
"C" and you're done.


Gord Dibben Excel MVP

 

[David French]

OK that's great in theory.
When I put it in the ALT+0176 appears literal in the cells instead of the
degree symbol.

Dave

 

[Gord Dibben]

David

Do not enter the literal characters "ALT + 0176"

Just hold the ALT key and hit 0176 on NumPad.

With a number in a cell go to Format>Number>Custom

Clear the Custom dialog box then enter literal ###.0 then hold ALT key and hit
0176 then enter the literal "F" or "C"(include the quotes).

Watch what happens to the value of the cell in the preview window.


Gord

 

[David McRitchie]

Some additional notes:

On a desktop the degree symbol is typed ALT+0176 on the
numeric keypad with NumLock on. The ALT key on US keyboards
is immediately to the left of the SpaceBar and the the Right of the
spacebar. On at least some European keyboard there is a
distinction between the two keys.

On a laptop use Fn+Alt+0176 on numeric keypad with NumLock off.

For more information on symbols in Excel, and HTML see
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/rexx/htm/symbols.htm

 

[Beege]

And how do you feel about ALT + 248? °

Beege

I think alt + 0176 is a better degree symbol than alt + 0186

remember to use the numeric keypad

guillemro

 

[Sandy Mann]

I feel it looks like the *Theta* symbol on my laptop

Sandy

 

[David McRitchie]

Okay, but why does Alt+248 without the leading zero
equate to Alt+0176 (with the leading zero)

 

[David McRitchie]

lowercase phi in my dictionary but that is if you type Alt+0248
instead of phi Alt+248

 

[David McRitchie]

instead of Alt+248

 

[Sandy Mann]

lowercase phi in my dictionary

...................but that is if you type Alt+0248
instead of phi Alt+248

Yes, I shall have to learn to read in English as well!

The strange thing is when I enter Alt+248 in A1 and then test it with
=CODE(A1) I get 176 returned?

Sandy

 

[Dana DeLouis]

Just for gee wiz... Under Insert | symbol, if one selects character 176, the
name of this character is displayed in the lower left corner. The name of
Char 176 is listed as "DEGREE SIGN"
Just for a comparison to Matlab, Mathematica's default Character encoding
for the Degree Unit symbol is also 176.

 

[Gary Smith]

Characters entered with the leading zero are interpreted as being in the
so-called ANSI character set, where character 248 is Latin small o with
slash. Characters entered without the leading zero are interpreted as
being in the default codepage ("OEM" character set) and are remapped to
ANSI. The most commonly used code pages are 437 and 850. In both of
these, character 248 is the degree symbol. When you enter Alt+248,
Windows changes the value 248 to 176, so what you see is the degree symbol
Windows assumes you meant.

The difference between using and omitting the leading zero applies only
when the OEM character also exists in the ANSI set, but in a different
position. Thus Alt+176 and Alt+0176 do the same thing because character
176 in CP 437 and 850 is a drawing charcter not present in the ANSI set.

 

[Guest]

If you're trying to display figures as degrees you should just type the
number in the cell and then set a custom format to make that value look like
degrees. Type your value in the cell then click on the cell and press CTRL+1
or click on Format->Cells. Click on the Number tab at the top of the window
and then click on Custom in the list on the left, type the following in the
box at the top on the right-hand side:

#.00 ALT+0176

(hold down the ALT key on your keyboard while typing 0176 on the keyboard's
number pad to get the last part of the expression, when you release ALT you
will see a degrees sign). When you click OK the cell will be formatted with
a degree symbol, you can then use the same custom format to format other
cells and will still be able to use the cell contents in calculations.

See http://www.allaboutoffice.co.uk/excustf.htm for more information on
creating custom formats.

Andrea Jones