Formatting

Quick reference

• 00:05 In this video we're going to look at Excel formatting basics.
• 00:09 Stuff that we can do to make our data look a little bit more interesting or enticing.
• 00:13 Rather than just having the Plain Jane formatting that we see right here.
• 00:18 So if we want to start messing around with things,
• 00:21 the easiest way to control visual appearance is to go to the Home tab.
• 00:25 I've selected Sports Store Inventory in cell A1 here and
• 00:28 what we're gonna do is we're going to go and we'll play around with the font.
• 00:31 So I’m going to click on the drop-down box here.
• 00:34 And why don't I select aerial black.
• 00:36 That seems like a nice solid font, I believe, and change the font size to,
• 00:41 say, 12.
• 00:41 Make it nice and big and bold.
• 00:45 We could also go and fool around with some different fonts.
• 00:47 If we grab this one and what I want you to notice here is as I scroll over,
• 00:51 see how the words are changing?
• 00:53 You can actually see what's called, live preview of the different formats.
• 00:58 So let's try this funky thing here, this Algerian.
• 01:01 And maybe we can set the font to a dark green and
• 01:06 make it italic and underlined, or something like that.
• 01:08 So, we can actually start formatting it, and
• 01:10 making things look a little bit funnier.
• 01:12 Maybe we can go back afterwards and
• 01:14 say you know, maybe we want to make that even bigger.
• 01:16 Fourteen or even change that font to a slightly darker green.
• 01:20 There we go, something a little bit different.
• 01:22 We're not restricted to formatting individual cells at one time either.
• 01:26 What we can do is we can actually grab multiple cells.
• 01:30 So, in this case, I'm going to go click the drop down by the fill here.
• 01:34 And we'll start scrolling through and look at some of the different things.
• 01:37 And again, the live preview is kicking in to show me what things will look like
• 01:40 before I actually commit to anything.
• 01:42 I'm going to go right now with a purple font or background fill here.
• 01:47 But notice that I can't really see my words very well so,
• 01:50 let's change the font as well.
• 01:52 And flip this out to something like white and maybe make it nice and bold as well.
• 01:56 How about that?
• 01:57 There we go. So, we've got a nice little header there.
• 02:00 We can also draw borders around our cells very easily.
• 02:04 Again, from the home tab, we can go and we can select our borders and
• 02:07 there's a whole bunch of nice options that we have here.
• 02:10 How about a thick border around the entire body area and that looks pretty cool.
• 02:16 And now, we'll get into some stuff that makes it maybe look not so nice.
• 02:20 But we'll go and we'll pick a different format here.
• 02:23 What about this like orange light accent here?
• 02:26 And now what I'd like to do is I'd like to draw borders around every one of these.
• 02:30 But the challenge that we've got here is, that we can't see a border that does.
• 02:34 We need this all borders, something that shows both the outsides and
• 02:38 the insides border.
• 02:39 And that'll allow it to actually draw lines across the individual
• 02:41 cells in the middle.
• 02:43 If we use this box here, it'll just draw one around the outside.
• 02:47 So, to get to more advanced format and we have a couple of different options.
• 02:50 We could click on any of the dialogue box launchers,
• 02:53 would take us into The Format Cells dialogue box.
• 02:58 Or, if we're somewhere in the grid and we don't want to mouse all the way up,
• 03:01 what you'll find, you'll get really used to this is, you just right click the area.
• 03:05 And you'll go to Format Cells and
• 03:08 this will pull up the same thing as the dialogue box launcher.
• 03:12 The Format Cells dialogue box has a lot of advanced formatting you can't
• 03:16 do through the ribbon user interface.
• 03:17 All the stuff that's not in the ribbon is in here.
• 03:20 So, you'll notice that we have Border here.
• 03:23 Now, you'll see that my border from what I've selected here has already inherited
• 03:27 three of the outside borders.
• 03:28 But it doesn't have one on the left hand side here.
• 03:31 But it has selected the nice big black thick line here.
• 03:34 So, I could say outline and I could say inside, and it will draw my lines.
• 03:39 It knows it's only one column so there's nothing to go in the middle.
• 03:42 It will draw my lines here, we can say okay.
• 03:44 And now when we click away,
• 03:46 we've got something that is formatted a little bit differently.
• 03:51 There's also other kinds of stuff inside the format cells dialog.
• 03:55 And this is where we start to play around with different things we may not
• 03:58 be able to access very easily.
• 04:00 You'll notice that if I wanted to format these numbers with a currency symbol,
• 04:05 I have a few different ones that I can actually pick off.
• 04:08 And yours will probably look different from mine.
• 04:11 But these are the defaults that actually show up in this particular area.
• 04:15 So, if I wanted to put a dollar sign on,
• 04:17 I could just click dollar it would put it into a numeric format.
• 04:20 But what if I needed something different?
• 04:22 What if I needed something that's not in this list because I am
• 04:25 working in a big multicultural organization?
• 04:29 And we are actually putting things out into formats that don't actually
• 04:32 show up here.
• 04:33 Well, to get to those, we can right click on our cells and say format sells.
• 04:39 We can go to the number tab, and we can look at Accounting.
• 04:44 And we can actually start to look at all
• 04:47 kinds of different number formats that you might actually need.
• 04:51 So, if you wanted to go and put this into say, a Mongolian currency, here you go.
• 04:57 It has the symbol for you.
• 04:59 Now, what symbols show up may be related to where in the world you are and
• 05:04 which ones are there.
• 05:05 But there's all kinds of different pieces that are actually showing up here nicely.
• 05:09 So you can pick one of those.
• 05:11 In addition, if we go back into Format Cells,
• 05:14 just wanna run through the rest of the options here.
• 05:17 You've got some alignment options that are actually show up in this area.
• 05:20 You've got fonts that you can change.
• 05:22 So, just like the fonts that we're changing up here.
• 05:25 Borders and fills, all kinds of different things rolled up into one dialogue.
• 05:29 So, you can control it all from one place.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.