Inject a little style into your worksheets without hours of formatting
by Kara Soos

 

Application:
Microsoft Excel 2000/2002/2003/2004/2007
Operating Systems
Microsoft Windows, Macintosh
 

 

Most Excel users consider formatting an afterthought; data analysis typically concerns us more than our worksheet’s appearance, leaving little time for design. But you can have the best of both worlds with Excel’s styles — consistent, attractive formatting without hours of grueling work.

 

To take full advantage of Excel’s styles, we’ll:

 

• Create a style based on a cell we already formatted.

• Apply styles quickly from your Formatting toolbar.

• Design a cell style from scratch.

• Modify an existing cell style to make global changes.

 

Excel styles include several aspects of formatting, such as number format, font, color, and borders. When you use a style, you can designate all of these design features in one fell swoop instead of applying them separately. And you probably use Excel styles already. Every time you click the Percent Style button PERCENT STYLE on the Formatting toolbar, Excel applies the built-in Percent style to the active cell. We’ll show you how to streamline your worksheet formatting with styles.

 

Use what you already have

 

The easiest way to create a style is to base it on an existing cell’s formatting. For example, let’s create a Main Header style based on the already-formatted headers in our worksheet, as shown in Figure A.

 

 

We’ve formatted the headers in row 1, and now we can use those cells to create a style.

 

To transform a formatted cell into a style:

 

1. Select cell A1 (which is actually merged with B1 in our example).

2. Choose Format | Style from the menu bar to display the Style dialog box.

3. Type Main Header in the Style Name dropdown list. As you type, you’ll see the attributes in the Style Includes (By Example) panel update to match the active cell’s formatting, as shown in Figure B.