Apple numbers User Manual

    Working with Text 

 

Using the Mac OS X Character Palette, you can insert special characters, such as 
mathematical symbols, letters with accent marks, arrows and other “dingbats,” and 
more. You can also use this palette to enter Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified 
Chinese, and Korean characters, as well as characters from other languages.

Place the insertion point where you want the special character or symbol to appear.

Choose Edit > Special Characters to open the Character Palette (or choose Characters 
from the Action pop-up menu in the lower-left corner of the Font panel).

Choose the type of characters you want to see from the View pop-up menu at the top 
of the Character Palette. If you don't see the View menu, click the button in the upper-
right corner of the window to show the top portion of the window. Click this button 
again to hide the top portion of the window.

Click an item in the list on the left to see the characters that are available in each 
category.

Double-click the character or symbol on the right that you want to insert into your 
spreadsheet, or select the character and click Insert. 

If the character or symbol has variations, they appear at the bottom of the window 
when you click the Character Info triangle or Font Variation triangle at the bottom of 
the palette. Double-click one to insert it in your spreadsheet.

If the character doesn’t appear in your spreadsheet, Numbers may not support that 
character.

Smart quotes are opening and closing quotation marks that are curly; the opening 
quotation marks are different from the closing quotation marks. When you don’t use 
smart quotes, the marks are straight and the opening and closing marks don’t differ. 

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Choose Numbers > Preferences, click Auto-Correction, and then select “Use smart 
quotes.” 

Smart quotes

Straight quotes