Smartphone and Mac users have long had quick and easy keyboard access to a gallery of emojis. Around the office, you might find them sprinkled onto the end of congratulatory messages or to signal that a message is urgent. Windows users, let your jealousy subside as the emoji drought is finally over!

How to Open the Emoji Picker

An emoji picker was added in Windows 10 as a part of the Fall Creators Update and has been improved upon in more recent updates.

To open the emoji picker, focus your cursor inside a text box and press Win+. or Win+; on your keyboard at the same time. Spoken out loud, hold the Windows key down and press the period or semicolon key to open the picker.

You can use the emoji picker in text editor applications like Microsoft Word, but you may also use it in other places like Microsoft Teams, Google Chrome, and Outlook.

Once you open the emoji picker, you can use your mouse to select an emoji, or you may use your arrow keys to target an emoji then your enter key to insert it.

You may also discover that you can search the emoji catalog by typing the name of an emoji after opening the picker.

Is it Okay to Use Emoji's at Work?

With an incredible 42 percentage of the U.S. labor force now working from home full-time, the US economy is now primarily a WFH, or Work-From-Home, economy. While successful remote work requires boundaries, balance, and discipline, many workforces have also struggled with communication.

Body language, tone, and voice provide us with unspoken cues necessary to deliver and receive messages in an intended way. In the age of chat services and email, many of these cues are missing. Developing a sharp emotional intelligence is useful for picking up on the subtle cues since we often lose the more obvious in-person cues.

This [emoji] trend is much bigger than the latest thing the youths are foisting on their crusty elders. It’s happening for deep neurological reasons, according to recent research, and can lead to better cooperation. But that doesn’t mean it’s always appropriate to use them, or that they can fully replace other forms of communication.

Wall Street Journal, "Yes, You Actually Should Be Using Emojis at Work"

While emojis can come with many benefits to your intra-office communications, each workforce needs to discuss how appropriate the use of emojis are in their setting. Are you using emojis at work? We'd love to hear from you in the comments!