How to Use Emoji in Google Sheets

 To use emoji in Google Sheets, simply cut and paste the emoji of your choice from Emojipedia or from the cheat sheet below into an empty cell. You can mix text and emoji in the same cell.

Clever Tiller customers have started using emoji to represent spending and savings categories in their Google Spreadsheets. Some spreadsheet purists might object, but I actually learned this trick from some of our most advanced Tiller users.

How Emoji in Google Sheets Display

Modern emoji are all Unicode characters. That’s why they work in Google Drive. However, it’s up to your computer, browser, or phone to control how they display.

The same emoji can look much different depending on the device and browser used to view them. (Want to know much, much more? Read Everything You Need To Know About Emoji)

In the support doc “Insert special characters” Google notes “You can’t insert special characters directly in Google Sheets.” However, it’s easy to paste emoji into Google Docs. Below, we show you how to do this in a Tiller template, and include an emoji cheat sheet for our default spending categories.

Note: Emoji in Tiller Templates at Your Own Risk

If you update your category names with emoji, you’ll see the warning “Invalid: Input must fall within specified range” on your previously-categorized transactions.

To get rid of the warning, you’ll have to re-categorize past transactions with the new emoji-fied category name.  It’s easy to do this – you can always update historic transactions in your Transactions sheet with a simple find/replace.

Also, I tested Tiller’s AutoCat add-on and it worked perfectly to auto-categorize transactions with emoji in their description. Let us know if it works for you!

How to Use Emoji in Google Sheets

Copy the emoji of your choice from this page (below) or Emojipedia.

In the “Categories” sheet, paste the emoji of your choice into the category column.

You can use the emoji and the category name together (which is what I recomend) , or just the emoji by itself.

When you categorize your expenses, you’ll now see the emoji in the dropdown menu:

When you use emoji with the new Tiller Budget, they’ll also appear in your budget dashboard:

Suggested Emoji for Tiller’s Default Categories

Tiller’s templates for Google Sheets include 21 suggested categories for tracking common income and expenses. You can add up to 200 categories in total, and completely delete the suggested categories.

Here are some suggested emoji for Google Sheets for Tiller’s default categories, with a few additional suggestions below.

?- Phone

? Utilities

?️  Dining Out

? Gear & Clothing

? Home Improvements

?️Subscriptions

✈️ Travel

? Classes

? Stuff

⛽ Auto & Gas

? Charity

?️ Groceries

?‍♂️ or ? Misc

? House

? Repairs

? Freelance

? Paycheck

?  Transfer

?️ Parking

? Reimbursable

Other suggested emoji in Google Sheets for custom Tiller categories:

☕ Coffee

?  Drinks

? Wedding

? Christmas Fund

⛪ Church

✂️ Beauty or Haircut

? Finance Charge