Emojis allow us to add ideas, emotions, and life to our everyday digital communications in a fun and appealing way. A single emoji can change the tone of an entire paragraph.

Luckily, you can also insert emojis in Google Sheets to spice up your worksheets and enhance their visual appeal.

This guide includes five different methods of inserting emojis into Google Sheets, and each way is more creative than the previous one. So without further ado, let’s get right into it.

Insert Emoji with the Windows Emoji Keyboard

You can insert emojis in your Google Sheets spreadsheet using a quick keyboard shortcut. This keyboard shortcut is available for both Windows and Mac OS and we will see both in detail below.

Curious to know it all? Read on.

Say, we have the following sample data set.

We want to add emojis to each row in column A.

To do that,

1. Place the cursor where you want to insert the emoji.

2. Press Win + . (Windows key + Period) on your keyboard to open the emoji keyboard for Windows. If you use Mac, press Ctrl + ⌘ + Space to access the emoji keyboard.
3. Select the emoji you want to insert from the pop up.

The selected emoji will appear in place of the cursor.

💡 Tip: You can also add Kaomoji and Symbols in Google Sheets using the emoji keyboard. Just select the other tab on the pop up labelled as 😉 and Ω.

Insert Emoji with Copy and Paste

Another easy way to insert emojis in Google Sheets is to copy and paste the emojis from some other place like an emoji website.

Want to see how that happens? Keep reading.

We want to insert emojis in the following sample data.

To do that follow these steps.

1. Place the cursor on the selected position in the cell.

2. Go to the Emoji Copy Paste website.
3. Type in the search bar whichever emoji you want – we want to add an airplane emoji, so we will search airplane.
4. The search result appears. Click on Copy.

5. Go back to your worksheet.
6. At the position of your cursor in the worksheet, right-click it to open a drop-down and select Paste from the options or press Ctrl + V.

This will paste the copied emoji to the specified location.

And it’s done. Follow the same procedure to paste other emojis to your data set.

Insert Emoji with Add On

You can also add emojis in Google Sheets using Add-ons. This method takes some time, but the advantage of an add-on is that it remains installed in your Google Sheets account.

You can access it with a couple of clicks whenever you need it as it becomes a part of your Google Sheets. If you want you can also uninstall the add-on by clicking uninstall from the options. The add-on will then no longer be accessible.

That being said, let’s see how to install an emojis add-on and use it in Google Sheets.

To get the emoji add-on,

1. Go to the Extensions tab.
2. Click on Add-ons and then select the Get Add-ons option.

3. The Google Workspace Marketplace dialog box will appear.
4. In the Search bar, type in Emoji Sidebar.
5. Select the first search result that appears on the screen.

6. Click Install.
7. A prompt will appear; press Continue.
8. On the next screen, allow access.

The Emoji Sidebar Add-on will be installed. Now, you can access the add-on,

9. Go to the Extensions tab.
10. Select Emoji Sidebar from the options.

The Emoji Sidebar pane will appear on the screen and you can select different emojis from the side pane.

11. Click on an emoji to copy it to the clipboard.
12. Position your cursor where you want to paste the emoji and then press Ctrl + V or right-click and select Paste.

And it’s done! You can add as many emojis to your spreadsheet now as you want. Pretty cool, no?

Insert Emoji with the UNICHAR Function

You can also insert emojis in Google Sheets using the UNICHAR function. This method is different from the ones above but takes slightly more time and research.

Here’s a little background information if you are not very familiar with the UNICHAR function. It is a Google Sheets built-in function that uses the Unicode values to return different characters.

Unicode is a standard that represents a wide range of codes for different characters, especially emojis, letters, symbols, etc. By leveraging Unicode, you can add a variety of different characters to your worksheet.

Since each character is assigned a unique code, it can be difficult to memorize all the decimal values by heart, but you can find all the unicode decimal values here.

All you have to do search and locate the emoji you want to add to your worksheet and copy its decimal code from the website. We will then paste the code as an argument for the UNICHAR function and it will return the selected emoji.

Let’s see a quick demo of this below. To insert the emoji,

1. Place your cursor where you want to insert the character.
2. Type the formula as =UNICHAR(
3. Go to the w3 School list of Unicode and copy the decimal code of the emoji you want.

For instance, if we want to insert the watch emoji in the worksheet the code will be 8986.

=UNICHAR(8986)

4. Paste the code in the formula as above.
5. Press Enter.

And it’s done! The UNICHAR function will return the emoji corresponding to the code you entered. You can do the same for as many emojis as you like.

📝 Note: Not all emojis have a decimal code. Some characters might only have a hexadecimal value, and for such characters, you will need to convert the hex code to decimal code.

To do that, use the HEX2DEC function in Google Sheets. Just paste the hex code as an argument and the result will be a decimal code. Once done, you can then use this code in the UNICHAR function.

Insert Emoji with a Custom Format

You can also insert emojis in Google Sheets using the custom format feature. The best part about this method is that the process is quick, fun, and highly customizable – not to mention the satisfaction of watching your values change to emojis.

Want to find out? Let’s get right into it, then.

📝 Note: Custom format only changes how a character or emoji is displayed in a cell. It does not affect the underlying value of the cell in any way.

Say, we have the following sample data.

It contains the suggested budget and the actual amount spent on different categories. Column C contains the amount left after the expenditure.

We want to display emojis in column D depending on whether the amount is positive, negative, or zero. Let’s see how to do that below.

1. Select the column header D.
2. Go to the Format tab on the menu bar and select Numbers.

3. Scroll down and select Custom number format.

"😀";"😢";"😐"

4. Paste the above format in the Format bar and press Apply.

5. Google Sheets will assign an emoji to each cell based on its value.

"😀 Everything's cool " ; "😢 Oh no " ; "😐 Ok "

💡 Tip: You can also add cool text next to the emojis and change their color by enclosing everything in the double quotes. Try writing “Everything’s cool” next to the positive values, “Oh no” next to the negative values, and “Ok” next to zero values as shown above.

Google Sheets will return the above result. How cool is that? Try it yourself.

Conclusions

In this article, we saw five different, fun ways to insert emojis in Google Sheets. You can now add a touch of your personality and visual appeal to your worksheet by inserting emojis in seconds.

Whether you want customization, simplicity, convenience, or automation, the above-explained methods cater to each of these preferences.

Our favorite method of inserting emojis in Google Sheets has to be using the Custom number format. Not only is it fun, but it also lets you customize your emojis to great lengths.

Have you decided on your favorite method yet? If not, then what are you waiting for? Experiment with each method and choose the one that suits you best in expressing yourself today.