Formatting cells
To make your data look prettier, Excel can format the appearance of cells to change the font, background color, text color, or font size used to display data in a cell.
Excel provides two ways to format cells: You can use Excel's built-in formatting styles, or you can apply different types of formatting individually. Some of the individual formatting styles you can choose include.
- Font and font size
- Text styles (underlining, italic, and bold)
- ext and background color
- Borders
- Alignment
- Text wrapping and orientation
Formatting cells with built-in styles
Excel provides a variety of predesigned formatting styles that you can apply to one or more cells. To format cells with a built-in style, follow these steps:
- Select the cell or cells that you want to format with a built-in style and then click the Home tab.
- Click the Cell Styles icon in the Styles group. A pull-down menu appears listing all the different styles you can choose, as shown.
The Cell Styles menu offers different ways to format your cells quickly. - Move the mouse pointer over a style. Excel displays a Live Preview of how your selected cells will look with that particular style.
- Click the style you want. Excel applies your chosen style to the selected cells.
Formatting fonts and text styles
Different fonts can emphasize parts of your spreadsheet, such as using one font to label columns and rows and another font or font size to display the actual data. Text styles (bold, underline, and italic) can also emphasize data that appears in the same font or font size. To change the font, font size, and text style of one or more cells, follow these steps:
- Select the cell or cells that you want to change the font and font size and then click the Home tab.
- Click the Font list box. A pull-down menu of different fonts appears. Click the font you want to use.
- Choose one of the following methods to change the font size:
Click the Font Size list box and then choose a font size, such as 12 or 16.
Click the Font Size list box and type a value such as 7 or 15.
Click the Increase Font Size or Decrease Font Size icon until your data appears in the size you want. - Click one or more text style icons (Bold, Italic, Underline).
Formatting with color
Each cell displays data in a Font color and a Fill color. The Font color defines the color of the numbers and letters that appear inside a cell. (The default Font color is black.) The Fill color defines the color that fills the background of the cell. (The default Fill color is white.) To change the Font and Fill colors of cells, follow these steps:
- Select the cell or cells that you want to color and then click the Home tab.
- Click the downward-pointing arrow that appears to the right of the Font Color icon. A color palette appears.
- Click the color you want to use for your text.
The color you select appears directly on the Font Color icon. The next time you want to apply this same color to a cell, you can click the Font Color icon directly instead of the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the Font Color icon. - Click the downward-pointing arrow that appears to the right of the Fill Color icon. A color palette appears and then click a color to use to fill the background of your cell. The color you select appears directly on the Fill Color icon. The next time you want to apply this same color to a cell, you can click the Fill Color icon directly instead of the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the Fill Color icon.
Adding borders
For another way to highlight one or more cells, you can add borders. Borders can surround the entire cell or just the top, bottom, left, or right side of a cell. To add borders to a cell, follow these steps:
- Select one or more cells and then click the Home tab.
- Click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the Border icon. A pull-down menu appears. Click a border style. Excel
displays your chosen borders around the cells you selected in Step 1.
The Border menu lists different ways to place borders around cells.
