Returns the character specified by a number

CHAR(number)

CHAR uses a character code between 1 and 255 to translate ASCII ("American Standard Code for Information Interchange") code page numbers into actual characters. It can be useful to generate characters that are hard to type, for example the capital letter A with symbols in different languages.

• =CHAR(65) // returns "A"
• =CHAR(192) // returns "À"
• =CHAR(193) // returns "Á"
• =CHAR(194) // returns "Â"
• =CHAR(195) // returns "Ã"
• =CHAR(196) // returns "Ä"
• =CHAR(197) // returns "Å"
• =CHAR(198) // returns "Æ"

CHAR(10) returns a line break. For example, ="This is the first line"&CHAR(10)&"This is the second line" will return the 2 sentences on separate lines (enable word wrap within the cell to view the results).

Use the UNICHAR function to translate modern unicode systems.

Use the CODE function to reverse lookup a character number.

• =CODE("A") // returns 65

Caveats

The CHAR function:

• requires a number between 1 and 255.
• returns a text value.
• returns #VALUE! if number is out of range or non-numeric.

CHAR examples.

In the examples below, the CHAR function is used to generate different characters. Note that the use of different fonts further expands the range of characters that can be used.

Use the CHAR function to return the character specified by a number.

Syntax

=CHAR(number)

The CHAR function consists of 1 argument:

1. number. Required. A number between 1 and 255 specifying the character to be returned from the character set used by your computer.

Character codes

Below is a complete list of character codes from 32 to 255. The first 31 characters are non-printing "control codes", most of which are no longer used.

Functions Category

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