Microsoft provides updated fonts in a hotfix which is available from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2496898. The hotfix works with Office, Excel, Word and most Windows applications, including browsers.

After installing the hotfix, you can enter unicode characters using “charmap.exe”. In Windows, press the WIN and R keys, type charmap and press enter.

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charmap

Whether you use the official (Microsoft supplied) hotfix or download a font like Foradian, people who you send your document to, may not have the requisite fonts. Word, Excel, PDF allow you to embed your own fonts, but there’s not much you can do for websites (sure you can do a lot of CSS work and embed your own fonts, but it won’t work with a lot of browsers out there). When sharing docs with people, you can also use the older U+20A8 symbol (₨).

Inserting the older symbol is not much different, and you can use charmap.

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Old Rupee symbol U+20A8 ₨
New Rupee symbol U+20B9 ₹

 

Another side-effect of installing the hot-fix is that Excel’s “currency format” dropdown now has a Rupee format available:

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Also see: “Three Ways to enter Unicode characters in Windows”

To use Indian formatting for numbers (i.e. Lakh, Crore instead of Millions) see this article: “Indian Currency format in Excel”