The following rules must be followed in order for the Caret Alt Code to work. Release the alt key after typing the code.Īs soon as you let go of the Alt key, the Caret Symbol will appear.As you hold down the Alt key, use the numeric keypad on the right to type the Caret Alt code (94).Press and hold on to one of your Alt Keys.The cursor should be positioned in the desired location.Open your Word document where the symbol is to be typed.The following are the detailed steps you can take to type these Caret Symbols on Windows using the Alt Code keyboard shortcut: This method is extremely beneficial because it saves a significant amount of time when trying to type special characters like the Caret Sign. On Windows, alt codes like this are used to type symbols or characters that may or may not be available on the keyboard. This method works only in Windows, and it requires that your keyboard have a separate numeric keypad with Num Lock enabled. To type with this method, press and hold one of the Alt keys on your keyboard while using the numeric keypad to enter the Alt code, then release the Alt key. The Alt Code shortcut for the Caret Symbol is Alt + 94. Caret Symbol Alt Code Shortcut (MS Word for Windows) Therefore, to type the Caret Symbol on the keyboard, press Shift + 6 simultaneously for both Windows and Mac. If you want to get the Caret Sign with this key, press down the Shift key before hitting on the Caret or 6 key. This means that pressing this key will give you the number 6 and not a Caret symbol. However, the Caret is a second key after the 6 key.
This Key appears in the same location on both Windows and Mac keyboards. The Caret Key is highlighted in yellow in the keyboard image below. The Caret Key is located at the upper center of nearly all computer keyboards, on the same key as the 6 key, directly above the middle of the T and Y keys of the English Qwerty keyboard. Using the Caret Key is one of the easiest ways you can type this symbol on the keyboard.
Installing in Windows is much easier, but don’t be put off by the Windows security warning – it is safe to install, it’s just such a niche piece of software that Windows doesn’t automatically recognise it.
If you’re not comfortable with using the Mac terminal to install software, then you might want to stick to cut and paste, but if you follow the instructions carefully on the page, you should be fine.
However, Espanso also has installable packages, such as the Mac Symbols package used above.Įspanso is free and available for Windows, Mac and Linux, although it’s more of a pain to install on a Mac and requires some quite techy steps, which you’ll find outlined on the installer page. Text expanders generally work best when you have to repeatedly type long passages of text, such as a welcome paragraph at the beginning of an email or your own postal address, and you just want to type something far shorter. To make those symbols appear in the text above, all I had to do was type “:ctrl”, “:alt” or “:eject” (without the speech marks), because I’m running a piece of software on my Mac called Espanso, which is a text expander.Ī text expander basically allows you to type a shortcut command (such as “:cmd”) and have that automatically replaced with something else entirely, such as the ⌘ symbol. If you (ahem) run a technical support website or have some other regular need to type ⌘, as well as other well-known Mac symbols such as ⌃ (control) or ⌥ (alt) or even ⏏ (eject), then I suggest you take a different tack entirely. If you need something that works every time, can I suggest you… Get the Espanso text expander Microsoft Office apps, for example, unhelpfully refuse to co-operate. Note that Apple text replacements don’t work in every app. To create that replacement for yourself, click the + button in the bottom-left of the window, then enter “cmmnd” (or whatever you want the shortcut text to be) in the Replace section and then copy the ⌘ symbol into the With section. That isn’t an Apple default, but one I prepared earlier. You might also have spotted the ⌘ symbol in that list in the screenshot above. Alternatively, just press the space bar after typing “appsy” and it will automatically appear. So, if you type the word “appsy” in a Mac app, you should see a little apple appear above the word, which you can just click on to have it replace that word in text. The sharper tools in the box may have spotted the Apple symbol in the list.