Wingdings 2 Translator

How to use the Wingdings 2 translator

1. Check that Wingdings 2 is chosen in the font selector, then type in the English box. The symbols appear as you type. Press Copy to paste them elsewhere, Save as PNG to download an image, or Share link to send the message as a link.
2. To decode, press the arrow between the two labels and paste the symbols. The translator shows which font it detected, with a Change link if it guessed wrong.
3. Only have a screenshot? Open the symbol keyboard below the translator and tap each symbol you see to decode it.

Wingdings 2 character chart

All 94 printable keyboard characters have a Wingdings 2 symbol. The chart lists each key with its symbol, Unicode name and code point, plus a button to copy it.

How Wingdings 2 differs from Wingdings

The two fonts use the same keys, but they do not share a single symbol. Wingdings puts hands, faces and religious symbols on the capital letters and most of the zodiac signs on lowercase a to i (the first three sit on the caret, underscore and backtick keys). Wingdings 2 has no faces and no zodiac signs at all. Its hands run from the less-than sign to capital N, and most of them are fingers pointing sideways or seen from the back. The digits are pages, a clipboard, a wastebasket and computer parts, and much of the lowercase row is numbers in circles. So the same word looks nothing alike in the two fonts:

What the Wingdings 2 keys hold

Wingdings 2 is laid out in keyboard order, and related symbols sit next to each other in runs:

• Punctuation and digits: pens, a paintbrush, a crayon, two kinds of scissors, a telephone and a receiver, notes and note pads, empty documents and pages, a clipboard, a wastebasket, a desktop window, a screen, printer and fax icons, an optical disc, a tape cartridge and two computer mice.
• From the less-than sign to N: reversed thumbs up and thumbs down, then pointing hands in every direction, in white and black versions, and a raised hand.
• O to X: an X mark, a check mark, boxes with a check or an X, circled X marks, a prohibited sign and a circle with a backslash.
• Y to the backtick: fancy ampersands and interrobangs, the combined question and exclamation mark.
• a to h: buds and vine leaves pointing into the four corners, handy as page ornaments.
• i to the tilde: the numbers 0 to 10 in white circles, then 0 to 10 again in black circles.

Check boxes and circled numbers

Most people reach for Wingdings 2 for two jobs. The first is check boxes. In Word or Excel, set the font to Wingdings 2 and type capital P for a check mark (🗸︎), O for an X (🗴︎), R for a box with a check (☑︎) or T for a box with an X (☒︎).

The second is numbered lists. The digit keys will not give you numbers, but lowercase j gives a circled one (①︎) and the letters after it count up to ten. The black circles start at lowercase t with zero, so u gives a black one (❶︎).

A document that uses the font still stores plain letters, so someone without Wingdings 2 sees P, O or j instead of the symbol. Symbols copied from this translator are Unicode characters, so they keep their meaning in a chat, an email or a post. For the Wingdings check marks and their keyboard shortcuts, see the Wingdings alphabet chart, and for more on typing symbol fonts, read how to type in Wingdings.

Where Wingdings 2 comes from

Microsoft's typography page for the Wingdings family lists Wingdings 2 (file name Wingdng2.ttf) as one of three styles, next to Wingdings and Wingdings 3. It says the Wingdings fonts were designed by Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow in 1990 and 1991, first named Lucida Icons, Arrows and Stars, then renamed, reorganized and released by Microsoft in 1992. The same page mentions encircled numerals, ampersands and interrobangs, all of which you will find in Wingdings 2. Microsoft now lists Wingdings 2 among the cloud fonts in Office for Microsoft 365 subscribers.

For years the font was the only way to show these pictures. Then Unicode 7.0, released in June 2014, added symbols from the Wingdings and Webdings sets, which is what lets this translator work with plain copy and paste. This site does not offer the font file, and you do not need it to read or share the result.

More symbol font tools

Every symbol font here works the same way, so you can switch between them in the font selector or open each one on its own page:

• The Wingdings translator for the original font with hands, faces and zodiac signs.
• The Wingdings 3 translator for a font made almost entirely of arrows and triangles.
• The Webdings translator for buildings, vehicles and media player buttons, and Webdings vs Wingdings for how the two families compare.