The feature or some of the options described in this Help topic are only available if support for Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, or Korean is enabled through Microsoft Office Language Settings.
When phonetic guides are displayed, the button next to Show or Hide is selected.
Note Microsoft Excel automatically adds phonetic symbols only to new data entered in the Japanese version of Excel. If you open files that were created in earlier versions of Excel or in other programs, phonetic symbols are not generated automatically.
To use the keyboard to move the pointer to the phonetic guides, press ALT+SHIFT+UP ARROW. To return to the parent string that the phonetic guides apply to, press ALT+SHIFT+DOWN ARROW. The color of the parent character string changes while the phonetic guides are being modified.
For example, when working in Japanese, the phonetic guides for would normally be split into and .
To combine these into one string of , select the target parent character string .
On the Format menu, point to Phonetic Guide, and then click Edit.
For example, when working in Japanese, the parent character string has a combined phonetic guide of .
To divide these into and , select the target parent character string .
On the Format menu, point to Phonetic Guide, and then click Edit.
The existing (combined) phonetic guides will be set as the phonetic guides for the selected character string only, so they cannot be applied to any other character string. In this case, modify the phonetic guides for , and then add new phonetic guides to .
To confirm the modified phonetic guides, press ENTER twice.
To cancel the changes, press ESC twice.
Change phonetic guide font, type, or alignment
You can apply formatting (such as bold or italic formatting), colors, underlining, or character effects to phonetic guides from the Font tab.