Four Ways to Add the Delta Symbol in Excel
Have you ever wondered how to add the Delta Symbol in your Excel spreadsheets? What is a delta symbol? It is a Greek symbol that looks like a triangle. If you are a statistician and you are presenting reports, you must know that your fellows would appreciate to seeing this symbol in your reports. It is a visual representation of the difference between two numbers over a period of time.
This is the delta symbol:
Δ
Here, we will teach you the different ways with how you can add the delta symbol in your spreadsheet, and help make your reports look more professional.
METHOD 1: Change the Font Style
The easiest method to add the delta symbol in a cell is by changing the font style. Follow these steps.
Step 1: Choose the Symbol font.
Step 2: Type the letter D in the cell.
Step 3: Press the enter key, and you will now see the delta symbol.
METHOD 2: Use the Insert Function
The second method involves using the Insert button in Excel’s ribbon.
Step 1: Select a cell. Next, click the Insert button; then click the Symbol icon.
Step 2: In the dialog box, select a font. Next, choose Greek and Coptic in the Subset. Once you select that, you will see the delta symbol.
Choose the delta symbol then click on Insert. After doing that, the Cancel button will change into a Close button. Click that, and you will get a delta symbol in the cell you selected.
METHOD 3: Use a Formula to Insert a Delta Symbol
If you know how to use Excel formulas, you can use this as an alternative to inserting the delta symbol in any cell.
Step 1: Choose a cell, and then type any of these two formulas:
=CHAR(112) or =CHAR(114)
Step 2: As you can see, the values are showing the letters P and R. To turn these characters into a delta, you need to change the font into Wingdings 3. As you do, the characters will turn into either a black or a white delta symbol.
METHOD 4: Program the Auto-Correct Function
If you want to use the delta symbol all the time, you have the option to format or create a program of your own, within your Excel software that will always translate into a delta symbol. Follow these steps to do this.
Step 1: Before you start, copy the delta symbol first. Next, click on File and then click the Options button.
Step 2: Once you do that, you need to click on Proofing, and then select Auto-Correct options.
Step 3: A new dialog box will appear. The next thing to do is to type a text, like DLTA, in the Replace box. In the With box, paste the delta symbol you just copied. Click on Add, OK, then another OK.
Step 4: Every time you type the word DLTA in a cell, the Excel program will return a delta symbol.
If you want to have some fun, you can use another text that you will find easy to remember. In fact, you can use your name. Just exercise caution. If you used Jerry to represent a delta symbol, Excel would always recognize the text “Jerry” as a delta symbol.
Summary
As you can see, there are several ways to make the delta symbol appear in Excel. It all depends on you which ones you find easy to remember.
One thing is for sure, your viewers, especially statisticians, will appreciate that you took the effort to indicate that the numbers next to your delta symbols represent a difference.
If you want to add more aesthetics, you can use the conditional formatting function, or us the manual font colouring function, to use colours on your symbols. Usually, green means the delta is good, and red means the delta is bad or negative.
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