Indian Rupee Gets a Symbol – How to update it in Microsoft Office Suite

New symbol of Indian RupeeIndia one of the fastest growing economy in today’s world economic order did not have any representative symbol in the world economic order inspite of being a one of the oldest economic civilization.

The Evolution Process of ` Symbol

After many months of scrutiny and scanning over 3,000 entries, the government of India approved the symbol of the Indian currency and made it official on 16th July 2010 which will differentiate it from currencies used in countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Mauritius.

The approved symbol is a blend of ‘Ra’ in Devanagri script and ‘R’ in Roman. Two parallel lines crossing this ‘Ra’ or ‘R’ denote the symbol “is equal to” one Indian rupee.  India’s currency will now have a distinct identity that will be internationally recognized at par with other international currencies like dollar, pound and yen.

This development is a big statement on the Intrinsic and growing value of Indian currency in the world economic order. It would lend a distinctive character and identity to the currency and further highlight the strength and robustness of the Indian economy.

As per Indian Government Sources, it would take about 12 – 24 months for various forums like and bodies like Currency Management Systems of various countries of the world, Software Companies, Unicode Standards and many other such bodies to incorporate the symbol and make necessary changes in the Softwares. When contacted, a Microsoft spokesperson said that “Once the Unicode consortium gives its nod and vendors get notification of the same, we can include the new symbol in the next release”.

However we can go ahead and use it from this moment. We will explain to you step-by-step how to incorporate it in Microsoft Office Suite. The steps are as given underneath.

Download rupee symbol font for Microsoft Office

Download the Foradian Font from http://blog.foradian.com/rupee-font-version-20 and save it in your Desktop. The Font would be called as Rupee_Foradian.ttf. (ttf Means True Type Font)

The version 2.0 of the Rupee font contains all the glyphs (letters) and is based on Bit stream Vera.

How to install Indian Rupee Foradian font and Use it in Microsoft Office

It is very easy. Now copy the downloaded font from your Desktop (Where you downloaded and saved it) and then go to control panel.

Now find the folder named as fonts, and paste this font into Fonts folder. For information of the readers, Fonts folder contains all the fonts which we use in our documents.

Now open Microsoft word, choose font Indian Rupee Foradian and press the keyboard key

The grave accent symbol – `

Normally we use Arial and other fonts while typing in office or word from the Fonts List, which is shown as a Drop Down Scrollable Box. From this box now we have to just select the font rupee Foradian and press the button above tab and it will generate symbol.

Once the Rupee symbol is generated do not forget to change the font selection to Arial or whichever you are using.

This key or button is situated above the Tab button on our keyboard. Normally we do not use this button. So it is the best choice.

We have tested it, and it works very well in MS Word, MS Excel, MS Access, MS Power Point, MS Outlook, Outlook Express Version 5 and above.

So, go ahead and use it with a justified sense of Pride. In case you face any problem, do write in to us via form provided at the end of this page, and we will try to provide solution for the same.

Limitations of rupee symbol font

The only limitation is that the person who is receiving your mail or your documents should have also got the Indian Rupee Foradian Font Installed in her / his computer. So if you are a corporate, you can mail this article to all the employees, or put it up in your organization’s Intranet or better still request your IT Administrator to implement the same. In effect it works best within a Closed User Group, as of now. Hence it is a temporary limitation.