Sometimes, when you’re typing a document in Google Docs, you need to insert a symbol in your document. Obviously, you can type some of the more common symbols using your keyboard.
But, if you need to use a less common symbol that’s not on your keyboard, there are a few more steps involved. But don’t worry, it’s actually quite easy, and in this article, I’m going to show you exactly how it’s done.
Prefer to watch a video about how to insert symbols in Google Docs? Click here.
How To Add Symbols In Google Docs
To insert a symbol in your Google Doc, the first thing you’ll need to do is place the cursor in the document wherever you want the symbol to be inserted.
And then, click on “Insert” in the menu across the top of the screen…
Then, in the menu that appears, select “Special Characters”.
Now, a box will appear on top of your document showing some arrows. And, if you wanted to insert one of these arrows into your document, all you would need to do is click on one of them…
And, it will be inserted into your document wherever the cursor is.
And that’s all there is to it! But, if you don’t want to insert an arrow, and you want to use a different symbol, you’ll need to go into a different category.
If you look at the drop down menus across the top of the “Insert special characters” box, you’ll see the last one is set to “Arrows”.
So to go into a different category, you’ll just need to click on the drop-down menu that currently says “Arrows”, and then, in the menu that appears, choose whichever category you want.
Now, you’ll see a whole lot of different symbols that you can use.
So this seems nice and easy, but I realize if you’re not sure which category your symbol will be in, finding it like this could take quite a while. But don’t worry, there is an easier way.
To the right of all the symbols, there’s a search box…
And if you want to find a specific symbol, all you’ll need to do is type the name of it in that search box.
So for example, if you were trying to insert the degree symbol into your Google Doc, rather than trying to figure out which category it would be in, you can just type “degree” into the search box. Now, you’ll see a bunch of symbols that involve the degree symbol.
This search doesn’t always work perfectly so you might need to try typing a few different things to find the symbol you want. For example, if you type “tick” into the search box, you won’t find a checkmark like you might expect, you’ll actually have to type “check” instead.
But generally, it works pretty well, and even if you have to try using a few different words, it’s still quicker than hunting through all the different categories.
But regardless of how you find the symbol you want to use, once you’ve found it, you’ll just need to click on it to insert it into your document…
And then, it will be inserted wherever your cursor was.
Now that you’ve inserted your symbol, if you only wanted to insert one in your document, or you want to continue typing your document and add the other symbols later, you can just click on the cross to close the “Insert special characters” box and get it out of the way.
But, if you want to insert another symbol right now, you can do that by moving your cursor to wherever you want to insert the next symbol (you can drag the box out of the way if you need to).
And then, find the next symbol you want to insert, and click on it to insert it…
And it will be inserted!
And that’s all there is to it! Once you’re done with inserting all your symbols, you can click on the cross to close the “Insert special characters” box…
And now you just have your document with the symbols in it!
So that’s all there is to inserting symbols in Google Docs, but if you want to see how to insert emojis in Google Docs, take a look at this article.
