Adding Circles around Letters or Numbers

GREAT,THANKS

For numbers AND letters of the alphabet (upper and lower case) inside circles, just use Insert Symbol and the MS Gothic Font in Microsoft.

This tip has been great for finding fonts with numbers enclosed in circles. Does anyone know of fonts or other means of using characters enclosed with other shapes, such as squares and triangles? The Enclose Character tool in Word does not do this very well.

David Angerman,
Allen's tips are for Windows only.

I would like to know how can we achieve that IN Word 2016,spec. in numbering footers

You lost me at "display the insert tab of the ribbon." I don't know what that is. I'm on Microsoft Word 2011, Mac 10.13.6 (Sierra.)

Hi Allen,
I found enclosed alphanumerics in a font called MS UI Gothic on my Surface computer if that helps anyone.
Kind regards
Maree

Hi,I have been trying to create a symbol on my computer to be able to insert in html but just can't figure out how it's done.Any help with this symbol would be much appreciated


MR inside a circle

Hi everyone I'm looking for the Number 100 encircled .. I don't have a PC just work off of my phone if any1 could help me I would greatly appreciate it.. Thanks for your time .

The enclose character in the QAT was a revelation for me. It also infuriated me that the same thing is not available in Excel. I am an engineer, and we use triangles enclosing numbers for revision marks. It amazes me time and again the lack of communication between product lines at Microsoft.

Thank you for the helpful information about how to find a circled lowercase letter. It's amazing how much I don't know about Word. I'm bookmarking your site!

Chris, Thank you for sharing about Combinumerals. I mentioned this font when I first responded to this tip request, but the editor chose not to mention it.
Paul, when I do a SaveAs from Word as a PDF, it does seem to work well, but that may be because I do have the Combinumerals Font installed. I have confirmed that sharing said PDF with someone who does not have the font still shows correctly. The same is not true for the Word document unless you select to Embed Fonts in the file within Word's Save options.

@Chis Leslie, thanks for suggesting Combinumerals Pro. Can you confirm what happens to these characters when they're PDFed, using Acrobat's default settings?

It is worth noting that if numerics in circles are all that is needed there is a very good free font 'Combinumerals'that allows you numbers up to 99. 'Combinumerals Pro' for a small charge allows you any number in a pseudo oval together with other usful symbols

The following macro creates a circle shape that sits in background behind the text, the circle is automatically sized to fit the selected text. If you want the circle to be colored then change line.forecolor. For example .Line.ForeColor = RGB(256, 0, 0) will give a red line. The circle will move with the text when editing but will become out of alignment if the page borders are changed.

Sub InsertCircleAroundText()
Dim x1 As Long
Dim x2 As Long
Dim y As Long
Dim aRange As Range
Dim shapeHeight As Single
Dim fontSize As Single
Set aRange = Selection.Range.Duplicate
If aRange.Start = aRange.End Then
MsgBox "No text selected"
Exit Sub
End If
fontSize = Selection.Font.Size
y = Selection.Information(wdVerticalPositionRelativeToPage) _
+ fontSize / 2 + 1
x1 = Selection.Information(wdHorizontalPositionRelativeToPage) - 1
Selection.Start = Selection.End
x2 = Selection.Information(wdHorizontalPositionRelativeToPage)
shapeHeight = x2 - x1
y = y - shapeHeight / 2

With ActiveDocument.Shapes.AddShape _
(msoShapeOval, x1, y, shapeHeight, shapeHeight)
.Line.Visible = True
.Line.ForeColor = RGB(0, 0, 0)
.Line.Weight = 0.75
.Fill.ForeColor = RGB(256, 256, 256)
.WrapFormat.Type = wdWrapBehind
.Select
End With
With Selection.ShapeRange(1)
aRange.Select
.RelativeHorizontalPosition = wdRelativeHorizontalPositionCharacter
.Left = .Left + fontSize / 2
End With
End Sub

Use the following macro if instead of a circle you want to place an ellipse around the selected text.

Sub InsertOvalAroundText()
Dim x1 As Long
Dim x2 As Long
Dim y As Long
Dim aRange As Range
Dim shapeHeight As Single
Dim fontSize As Single
Set aRange = Selection.Range.Duplicate
If aRange.Start = aRange.End Then
MsgBox "No text selected"
Exit Sub
End If
fontSize = Selection.Font.Size
shapeHeight = fontSize + 6
y = Selection.Information(wdVerticalPositionRelativeToPage) - 1
x1 = Selection.Information(wdHorizontalPositionRelativeToPage) - 1
Selection.Start = Selection.End
x2 = Selection.Information(wdHorizontalPositionRelativeToPage)
With ActiveDocument.Shapes.AddShape _
(msoShapeOval, x1, y, x2 - x1, shapeHeight)
.Line.Visible = True
.Line.ForeColor = RGB(0, 0, 0)
.Line.Weight = 0.75
.Fill.ForeColor = RGB(256, 256, 256)
.WrapFormat.Type = wdWrapBehind
.Select
End With
With Selection.ShapeRange(1)
aRange.Select
.RelativeHorizontalPosition = wdRelativeHorizontalPositionCharacter
.Left = .Left + fontSize / 2
End With
End Sub

As Steven LaLonde has recommended, I've
added all 20 values to my autocorrect rules:
1c becomes ①
11c becomes ⑪
20c becomes ⑳

But these rules can backfire if I need to refer, say, to paragraph 1c. So as a precaution, I've also created keyboard shortcuts and shared them with coworkers in my proposals group, as follows:

"I’ve added 20 keyboard shortcuts—Control+nn—to create the circled numbers 1 through 20:
①②③④⑤⑥⑦⑧⑨⑩⑪⑫⑬⑭⑮⑯⑰⑱⑲⑳

"For example:
To type ①, press <Ctrl>+01 (0, then 1)
To type ⑪, press <Ctrl>+11 (1, then 1 again)
To type ⑳, press <Ctrl>+20 (2, then 0)

"Circled numbers are used to number steps or areas of a figure, fields of a form, or sections of a table. Windows offers three sets of circled numbers. This set is the only one that extends to 20. You can find it in the Symbol dialog box under the font Arial Unicode MS.

"Unfortunately, this series is missing the circled zero. To create a circled zero, please use the circled zero from the Wingdings series: press <Ctrl>+00 (0, then 0)."

Now that I know these special symbols exist, this seems like the most practical method. To add an extra lay of convenient, one might take advantage of the auto-correct feature to let the typing of say (1) be replaced with the number one within the circle. Since there are only 20 circled numbers in this set, you would only have to setup 20 auto-corrections. This obviously depends on whether you normally find yourself using numbers within parentheses. You might prefer some other set of characters to stand in place, such as (1.

I do not yet have Word 2016, but I would be interested to know if the shortcut key still works even if the font does not actually exist in Word 2016. For example, type in 2460, highlight it, and then type Alt+X. Please let me know if that becomes the number 1 within a circle.

Thanks - Steve

I get strange results from the Enclose Characters command. The results just do not look good, as the text will bleed into the enclosing border or extend outside of it. Even using the Enlarge Symbol option, especially for the square, does not result in the character being contained completely within the enclosing shape (the triangle and the diamond do this better, for some reason). Also, I see that this must be done through some kind of field code, since when I have Field Shading set to "Always" the enclosed character is shaded.

As to drawing a circle, if you add text to the shape, it appears that you are limited by the built-in requirements for spacing around text. For instance, to create the letter "A" in 12 point Calibri, after making sure that it's centered vertically and horizontally and that there is no paragraph leading, the circle will have to be no smaller than .45 inches, or the letter will start to disappear.

If you want to make the letter larger, the only way I've found is to draw a text box large enough to encompass the text in the point size desired, type the text in it, center it vertically and horizontally within the text box, draw the circle to the desired size on top of the text box, send the circle to the back behind the text box, align them by selecting both shapes and use "Center" and then "Middle," and then group them. Seems like a lot of steps. There aren't any better ways to do this?

Does the oval tool create an inline oval? If not, then changes to the text might cause the text to move while the oval stays put, resulting in an oval around the wrong character, right?

Anybody know where the "Enclose Character" is in Word 2016?