Basic Cell Formatting in Excel

Summary

Never again present a spreadsheet to your boss that is purely black and white. Change the formatting within cells by adding colours and changing the size of the text to make it more interesting to the reader. This tutorial will provide simple examples of what you can do to a cell to change the standard formatting.

By default, all cells in a workbook are formatted the same. This can make it hard to interpret worksheets that contain a lot of information. Just a bit of basic formatting can improve the look and feel of your document and make it much easier to understand. It is also important to apply the appropriate number formatting depending on the type of information you are presenting, e.g. percentage (%) and currency ($).

Some basic formatting tools include the following:

• Fill Color (Background colours of a cell)
• Text colours
• Text size and styles
• Borders
• Number Formats
• Alignment

Let’s take a quick look at each of the above.

Background colours of a cell

The Fill Color command () is located in the Font group, on the Home ribbon:

The keyboard shortcut for Fill Color is: ALT, H, H.

Click on the little drop-down arrow to reveal many colours to choose from.

If you do not see the colour you want, click on the option “More Colors…” This reveals a palette of 127 colours in the Standard tab, and 16 million colours on the Custom tab!

Examples of changing the background colours using the above instructions:

Text colours

Located on the Home tab on the top of the excel screen, look for the Font Color symbol.

Click on the drop down arrow and it will open up with many colours for you to choose from.

If you do not see the colour you want, you can click on the option “More Colours” as shown below to have more options.

The keyboard shortcut for Text Color is: ALT, H, FC

Examples of changing the font colours using the above instructions

Text size and styles

Located on the Home tab on the top of the excel screen, look for the symbol known as Font and Font Size.

The keyboard shortcut for Font is: ALT, H, FF

The keyboard shortcut for Font size is: ALT, H, FS

Click on the drop down arrow and it will open up with many different font styles to choose from.

You can do the same with the font size, click on the drop down arrow and there will be different font sizes to choose from.

Here are some examples of what can be achieved when we use different font styles and sizes:

Add Cell Borders

Located on the Home tab on the top of the excel screen, look for the Border Icon

Borders can be used to separate different areas of the spreadsheets. It is also used to format the spreadsheet total values.

Example:

 

You can click on the little drop down arrow on the side, or use the keyboard shortcut Alt, H, B to get a list of options:

By then pressing any of the letters shown in the image above, we can apply that border, e.g.

• To add a thick outside border to our selection we will press Alt, H, B, B
• To remove all borders in the selected area, press Alt, H, B, N
• To add a simple border around the selection: Alt, H, B, S

Number Formats

Located on the Home tab on the top of the excel screen, look for the Number Formats icon.

In excel, you can do various format in a cell such as currency, time, date, percentage, text and etc. This will depends on what you are using your spreadsheets for.

Examples:

The keyboard shortcut for currency option is: ALT,H, AN

The keyboard shortcut for percentage option is: ALT,H,P

You can also click in the drop down arrow on the side to get a list of options:

Alignment

Located on the Home tab on the top of the excel screen, look for the Alignment Symbol.

Alignment indicates where in the cell the text is positioned. The default position of text is on the left, whereas the default position for a value is on the right.

Using alignment, the text can be positioned in the centre, left hand side, or right-hand side of a cell (horizontal alignment).

It can also be used to align the text to the top, middle or bottom of the cell (vertical alignment).

Here are some examples of left, centre and right aligned text:

Press Alt, H, A to bring up the list of alignment options, followed by the following letters:

• T – Top aligned (Alt, H, AT)
• M – Middle (Alt, H, AM)
• B – Bottom (Alt, H, AM)
• L – Left (Alt, H, AL)
• C – Centre (Alt, H, AC)
• R – Right (Alt, H, AR)