Insert the official Power on, off, sleep or standby symbols in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office apps. Either via a font or graphics.
These power symbols are not directly supported in either Windows or Mac. That’s surprising because the symbols are commonly used on appliances and in software. They are international standards and included in the Unicode symbol set since 2016. Despite all that, none of the standard Windows symbols fonts (Segoe UI Symbol, Arial Unicode MS etc) nor macOS fonts (Apple Symbols, Apple Color Emoji) include the power symbols.
We’ll show you where to get the Power symbols as a font or graphics. Without the right font, all you’ll see is an empty box instead of the correct symbol.
Power Symbols – the full list
Here’s the full list of power symbols available in Unicode, the Hex code number to make them easier to find or use Alt + X in Word for Windows.
There are some differences between the specifications from the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC 60417) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE 1621) .
The broken circle with line means ‘Power’ in the IEEE 1621 spec but ‘Standby’ in IEC 60417. IEEE 1621 uses the crescent moon symbol for ‘Standby’.
Power Symbols font
The group that proposed the Power symbols for inclusion in Unicode have some fonts that include the symbols. Go to https://unicodepowersymbol.com/font/ and download either the TrueType or OpenType versions that will work on Windows or Mac. If using in a shared document, remember to embed the font.
Note: there’s a link to SVG versions of the symbols on Github but they don’t work in a browser or Office because of a problem with the coding, see below for links to power symbol images or graphics.
Microsoft Icon
Icons in modern Office only has the Power or Standby symbol. Go to Insert | Icons | search for Power. As usual there are two versions.
Full set of Power symbol graphics
For a complete set of power symbols, we turn again to Wikipedia which has a good explanation of the symbols plus SVG versions to download. SVG is a supported format in modern Office, what Microsoft calls ‘icons’.
Here’s are links to the download page for each of the five power symbols.
Power / Standby (broken circle with line)
Power on/off (circle with vertical line)
Power on (vertical line)
Power Sleep/Standby (crescent moon), scroll down the page to see other versions.
Power Off (Circle)
From Wikimedia, download the SVG version aka “Original file” or the PNG version for older Office releases without SVG support.
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