How to Add a Tilde in Excel

The "tilde" character is the small squiggly line in the upper-left of your keyboard. If the tilde character is used in any functions in your Excel file, the tilde does not show but instead triggers a function to execute. To overwrite this function you place a single quote in the beginning of the Excel cell. This tells the Excel spreadsheet to use the literal tilde character instead of using a function.

Instructions

1. Open the Excel software from the Windows "Start" menu. Open the spreadsheet file you want to edit.

2. Type the single quote character as the first character in the cell that contains the tilde. For instance, the following code tells Excel to display the literal tilde without triggering any functions:

   '~this is the text

3. Press "Enter" to change the cell. Notice all text after the single quote displays as a literal.