1.4 Formatting Cells and Sheets

The menu items used to change the appearance of the contents of cells can be accessed from the Font and Alignment groups on the Home menu tab. To change the appearance of a particular cell, you first select the cell and then use the appropriate menu item. To alter the appearance of multiple cells, just select a range of cells before making your changes. Our discussion in this lesson will be limited to the commonly used menu items that appear by default when the Excel window is maximized.

The Font group contains menu items that change the appearance of the text in the cells (see Figure 1.16). The Font Face drop-down menu allows you to choose the font from the list of installed system fonts on your computer; the drop-down list displays a preview of each font to help you pick the best font face for your project. The Font Size menu list allows you to specifically define the size of the text in the cells. The Increase/Decrease items will quickly make text larger and smaller. You will notice that there are also other menu items for making text bold, italicized, or underlined and for changing the color of text.

Excel also allows you to change the positioning of text within a cell or range of cells (Figure 1.17). These features comprise the Alignment group of menu items. You can specify the top-to-bottom position of cell contents using the Vertical Alignment menu items; notice that text can be placed in the top, middle, or bottom of a cell. In addition, the Horizontal Alignment menu items define the left-to-right position of text. Cell contents can be centered or positioned to the far left or right of a cell. Wrap Text allows the entire contents of a cell to appear by displaying it on multiple lines within the same cell. The Indent items increase or decrease the space between the left edge of a cell and where the contents appear in the cell. Finally, the Merge Cells feature allows you to combine cells to create larger cells that span columns or rows in the spreadsheet.

Excel also offers options for changing the appearance of the cells. You can change the background color of a cell (or range of cells) by selecting that cell and choosing a background color from the Colors menu list in the Font group of the Home menu tab (see Figure 1.18). To access the Colors menu list, you click on the upside-down triangle next to the Font Colors icon. The Colors menu list is populated with frequently used Standard Colors and those colors that fit the scheme of the colors already used in the spreadsheet (called Theme Colors). To save time, you can apply the last color you used to another cell by clicking on the Font Color icon instead of the upside-down triangle.

In addition to changing the background colors, you can define borders for cells. To define a border for a cell (or range of cells), click on the upside-down triangle next to the Borders icon found in the Font group on the Home menu tab (Figure 1.19). Excel populates the Borders menu list with popular choices for cell borders. As with background colors, you can apply the last border you used to another cell by clicking on the Borders menu icon.

You can store a number of different types of data in Excel worksheets. Different types of data include text (letters, words, and phrases), numbers, dates and times, and other specialized or customized data types. Most worksheets contain several different types of data.

For example, a budgeting worksheet will likely contain text to describe the line items in the budget, dates to describe when a particular income or expenditure item will occur, and numbers to record the monetary value of each line item. While you can use many different types of data in a single worksheet, each cell in a worksheet can only be defined as a single data type. To define the data type associated with a cell, you click on the cell and select the desired data type from the Numbers group of the Home menu tab (Figure 1.20).

As you can imagine, Excel will treat different types of data in different ways; for example, you could not do arithmetic on text. Additionally, you will likely want to display some types of data differently than others. In one case, you may wish to display monetary values using currency symbols or fractions as percentages. You may also want to change the number of decimal places that are visible to the user. All of these options are available in the Number group of the Home menu tab.

Should you find that you would like more options for defining the data types and display options for your worksheets, click on More Number Formats… on the Data Types drop-down menu list (Figure 1.20). This will open the Number Format dialog window. (Figure 1.21). Here you can select the data type and display options for a cell. You will notice that you can see a preview of the options you select in the Number Format window.

It is not uncommon to apply a number of different format options to a cell to make it look how you want it to look. Often you will want to reuse this same set of formatting options to display other elements of your worksheets. Fortunately, you can reuse the same set of formatting options from one cell in other cells quickly and easily using the Format Painter feature (see Figure 1.22). To apply the format from one cell to another, you first select the cell with the formatting you want to copy, and then in the Home menu tab followed by the Clipboard group, click on the Format Painter button. Next, select the destination cell where you want to apply the formatting.

Also, when you are using several formatting options in your cells, you might not like the result. In this case, you might find that it is easier to clear away all of the formatting you have done and start over than to change the different formatting options you have already applied. To easily clear the formatting options used in a cell, select the cell you would like to clear and click on Clear Formats in the Editing group of the Home menu tab (Figure 1.23). Notice that you can also clear the cell contents and other aspects of the cell.

Excel also allows you to format entire worksheets. Excel has several worksheet styles, called themesBuilt-in colors and styles that can be applied to entire worksheets. , that you can apply to quickly add colors and other style effects to your worksheets.

Worksheets are different than other documents because they are not designed around paper boundaries. When you create a word processing document, you do so with the intention of printing the document. The layout of each page is designed by thinking about how the document will appear on paper.

However, when you create a worksheet, you do so to complete a set of calculations. Often you format the various elements of the worksheet to be easy to read, and you will rarely worry about how the worksheet will appear on a printed page.

As you can tell, we just scratched the surface of the options that are available within Excel for formatting cells and worksheets. Take some time to experiment with the other formatting options available within Excel.