Emojis in PowerPoint – simple and effective ???

Especially in the consulting business, you often find yourself in the position of creating status reports and similar presentations. Often, traffic lights, checkmarks, and stop signs are used that were designed by a graphic artist or are part of a special font. If companies use their own fonts, incompatibilities and display errors can occur again and again on other devices. Custom graphics do not have these problems, but cannot be easily aligned with the text in PowerPoint. As a result, each graphic must be touched and moved when text changes affect the layout of the presentation.

So, is a smiley supposed to replace my traffic light graphic now?????
Not necessarily, because in the emoji library there are some symbols that have little to do with the laughing faces, but can be real status ❌ or trend indicators ????.
Since April 2018, Windows 10 has had its own emoji keyboard (from version 18.03). This can be easily accessed with the key combination “Windows” + “.”. On a Mac, it opens with the command “Control” + “cmd” + “Spacebar”.
It should be noted that although emojis follow a certain standard and each emoji is based on a Unicode including definition, the representation may vary depending on the application and operating system.
However, in PowerPoint there is a selection of emojis that can be used across platforms and even colored individually, like a normal letter or text. For example, squares, circles, arrows, warning signals and many other symbols can be used, if required also CI-compliant.
To test whether the colored symbols also work on other platforms, simply use the online version of PowerPoint in Microsoft 365 – if the symbols are colored here, you can assume that it also works on Mac and other systems.

Here is a selection of compatible emojis:

⚠ ▶ ⏸ ⏯ ⬇ ➡ ⬅ ⬆ ↘ ↗ ↙ ↖ ↕ ↔ ℹ ✔ ☑ ™ ® © ✖ ◼ ◻ ▪ ▫ ???? ???? ???? ???? ☀ ???? ☠ ????

If the report is only distributed via PDF, you don’t have to worry about compatibility and can draw from the full range.

Emojis in internal communication – structured and clear ????

Our brain processes images largely automatically. They work directly: they directly address the visual centers of our brain and do not have to be decoded like texts. This not only saves energy, but also a lot of time.
This can be used when naming channels in Microsoft Teams. Especially if you have several dozen channels in your teams, it quickly becomes confusing and you lose a lot of time searching for the right channel. A suitable emoji before the title of the channel can therefore help to find your way around better and, above all, faster. It is important to ensure that the emojis also match the respective topic of the channel and are not used excessively. A good example would be e.g. “✈ Travel expenses”.

In modern communication tools such as Microsoft Teams or Slack, conversations within the individual channels are often divided into so-called threads or topics. This can quickly become confusing, as you often have to jump into the individual conversations and read the latest messages to find out the current status.

To solve this problem, it makes sense to place an emoji for the current status before the title of the conversation:

• When the conversation is created, e.g. a ???? is used to signal that the conversation is open and the discussion has not yet been clarified.
• As soon as the problem is solved or the conversation is finished, the title is adjusted so that there is now a ✅ in front of the title. This way, every participant immediately sees that the topic has been completed.

Of course, the status indicators can be freely selected and further ones can be introduced, such as ???? for new or ⚠ for critical topics.

Conclusion ????

Due to the standardization and compatibility on almost all devices, as well as the wide distribution, especially in private communication, emojis are now not only a fun way to express emotions, but can also bring real added value in everyday work. Through the simple and clear statement, the small symbols can help to convey a fact or status quickly and clearly, thus saving valuable time.
Creativity is required. Happy World Emoji Day and have fun trying it out!