Tip of the day: Enter international currency symbols in Office

Money makes the world go around, so why is there only one currency symbol (the dollar sign) on a standard U.S. keyboard?

To enter an international currency symbol in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint (or in Outlook’s message editor), you’ll need to memorize its four-digit ANSI character code and enter that code using the numeric keypad. Here are the codes for some common symbols:

To enter one of these symbols, first make sure that Num Lock is turned on. Then hold down the Alt key and enter the four-digit code using the numeric keypad. (If you use the numbers along the top of the keyboard, this won’t work.) When you release the Alt key, your symbol appears in the location you selected.

Want to see the codes for more symbols? From Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, choose Insert, Symbol. Select a symbol from the available list and look at the bottom of the dialog box to see its ANSI code.

(By the way, this technique works in any Windows program that supports ANSI characters. If you need to enter symbols in a non-Office program, try these codes and see if they work.)