

No matter if you use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Outlook or OneNote: You can easily insert bullet points and create bullet point lists. In Excel you can’t. But there are some simple workarounds. In this article, you learn 6 methods for inserting bullet points in Excel.
Contents
Like said in the introduction, there is no very smooth way to create bullet point lists in Excel. Either the methods require several steps or the result just doesn’t look very nice. In this article, you learn 6 methods of inserting bullets in Excel – either directly into the Excel cell or to a text box. In the summary section of this article, you can download all 6 methods in a comprehensive Excel workbook.
Insert the bullet symbol with the keyboard shortcut Alt + 7 (on the number pad).
The first method is usually also the fastest: Insert the bullet symbol with a keyboard shortcut. In order to achieve this, enter a cell (for example by pressing F2 on the keyboard) and press Alt + 7 on the number pad.
Please note:
Insert a bullet character from the “Symbol” feature in Excel.
The second method is quite similar to our first method above. But instead of using a keyboard shortcut, you manually insert the bullet character.
Please note:
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This method is again very similar to methods 1 and 2 above. Instead of inserting bullet character with a keyboard shortcut or from the “Symbol” menu, you could just copy and paste it from there. Please feel free to copy any of the characters below.
• ● ◦ ▪ □ ♥ ─ − → ►
Use a custom number format in order to create a bullet point list.
If you don’t want to insert the bullet character for every cell again you could just define a custom number format which adds the bullet character automatically.
Please note:
Use an additional column for inserting bullet points.
The fifth method for inserting bullet points usually looks most tidy. The idea is to insert an additional column containing the bullets. Please take a look at the example on the right-hand side.
Please note:
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You can add bullets to text boxes in Excel easily.
If you don’t want to add bullet points inside an Excel cell but to a text box in Excel instead, you can use the built-in function.
That’s it. Now you can start typing your text.
In this article, you learn how to insert bullets to text cells and text boxes in Excel. The first 4 methods introduced above insert the bullet symbol into your Excel cell. Method 5 uses an additional column which has the advantage, the multi-line cells have a nice line break. The sixth method deals with bullets in text boxes.
Method 1 | Method 2 | Method 3 | Method 4 | Method 5 | Method 6 | |
Name | Alt + 7, Alt + 9 or Alt + 0149 | Insert the bullet symbol from “Symbols” | Copy and paste the bullet character (from here) | Use a custom number format | Add an additional column | Bullet points in text boxes and charts |
Description | Insert the bullet symbol | Insert the bullet symbol | Insert the bullet symbol | Insert the bullet symbol | Use a helper column for the bullet symbol | Insert a text box and right click into it. Then click on “Bullets” |
Works on multi-line cells | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Please feel free to download the example workbook here. It contains 6 detail worksheets (for each method one worksheet) plus the summary table.
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