Which option do you click in the Bullets list to use a symbol or picture for a bullet character

Watch Video – How to Add Bullet Points in Excel

You can easily add bullet points in a cell Excel (Yes.. easily).

Until I knew this trick, I used to put a dash (-) or arrow greater than (>>) at the beginning of the text, and that could sometimes be a pain.

I always wondered why was Excel devoid of such basic functionality.

But that was just my ignorance. There is not one, but many ways to add bullet points in a cell in Excel.

• Using Keyboard Shortcut
• Using Insert Symbol Dialogue Box
• Using the CHAR Function
• Using Custom Number Formatting
• Copy Pasting a list from MS Word or PowerPoint

How to Add Bullet Points in Excel

In this tutorial, you’ll learn various ways to insert bullet points in Excel. While all these methods are quite simple, you only need to know a couple to get your work done.

Using Keyboard Shortcut

You can quickly insert bullet points in Excel using the following keyboard shortcuts.

If you have a numeric keypad on your keyboard:

• Select the cell in which you want to insert the bullet.
• Either double click on the cell or press F2 – to get into edit mode.
• Hold the ALT key, press 7 or 9, leave the ALT key.
• As soon as you leave the ALT key, a bullet would appear.

ALT + 7 and ALT + 9 both inserts a different kind of bullet (see below):

If you do not have a numeric Keyboard (like my laptop), activate the NumLock first and then repeat the above steps (or try with ALT + FUNCTION + 7)

If you want to insert more bullet points in the same cell, in the case of having a list in a single cell, repeat the same steps. For example, if you are building a list in a cell, enter the bullet followed by the item name, press Alt + Enter to insert a line break, and then insert the bullet again (as shown below):

Note: Once you have the bullet in a cell, you can copy it like any other character.

Using Insert Symbol Dialogue Box

You can use the Insert Symbol option in Excel to insert bullet points in Excel.

Here are the steps:

This will insert the bullet in the selected cell. Once you have the bullet in a cell, you can copy-paste it wherever you need it.

Using the CHAR Function

You can also use the CHAR function to insert bullet points in Excel.

If you enter =CHAR(149) in Excel, it automatically gets converted into a bullet.

This could be useful when you have a list of items and you want to add a bullet to all the items at one go. Something as shown below:

In the above example, bullet points were added to the list of fruits in A1:A4. Here is the formula used in cell B1:

CHAR(149) inserts the bullet and a space character ensures there is space after the bullet and before the item name.

Using Custom Number Formatting

This one is awesome. You can use custom number formatting to automatically insert bullets in excel as soon as you enter anything in a cell.

Something as shown below:

Magic. Isn’t it?

Well… Sort of 🙂

What’s working here in the back end is a nifty custom number formatting trick.

Before I get to the trick, here is what you need to know about custom number formatting in Excel. It allows you to specify the format for four kinds of data type: