Google Sheets – How to Add Dot Leaders

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Dot leaders are repeated dots that visually connect a label to the corresponding information on the same line, commonly used in tables of contents but also used in accounting formats, for example:

Income ............. $   100,000
Expenses ........... $    80,000
Net Income ......... $    20,000

In Excel, you can add dot leaders to any cell as follows:

  1. Right click on the cell and select Format Cells….
  2. Select the Number tab.
  3. Under Category, select Custom.
  4. In the Type field, input @ *..
  5. Click OK.

After the cell's content (represented by the @ in the Type field input), this will display a space followed by however many periods it takes to fill the cell, i.e., a dot leader.

Apart from the obvious way of just manually putting in a bunch of periods at the end of each cell, is there a way to do the same thing in Google sheets?

Best Answer

This is one reasonable solution. While not quite as tidy as the Excel version, it gets the job done:

  1. With the cell selected, select Format > Number > More Formats > Custom number format….
  2. In the Custom number formats input field, insert @\ ........., including as many periods as needed to reach the end of the cell.
  3. Click Apply.
  4. With the cell selected, select Format > Text wrapping > Clip. This will make the dots reach the end of the cell without spilling over.

You can then easily apply that to other cells by pasting formatting only.

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