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How to import styles into a workbook.

Exercise files

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Formats and Styles Part 2.xlsx
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Quick reference

Formats vs. Styles Part 2

Formats vs. styles explained using the CRaFT methodology.

When to use

Formats vs. styles can assist in building a financial model in Excel which is easy to understand and navigate through.

Instructions

Importing Styles

  • When you create a new workbook, you do not need to re-create all of the styles that you created in the previous workbook. To import styles from another workbook, follow the instructions below:
    • Select Cell Styles
    • Select Merge Styles
    • Select the workbook you use wish to import the styles from

  • Watch out when copying cells from one workbook into another as you may be bringing the styles over into the new workbook unintentionally. This may create issues if both workbooks have the same styles created. It will create duplicate styles. It can take time to delete the duplicate styles as you can only delete one style at a time. To avoid this issue, it is best to paste the formulas only, not the styles. This can be done by using the shortcut ALT + E + S and selecting Formulas, after the cells have been copied from the original workbook

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  • 00:04 More on formats versus styles.
  • 00:08 I mentioned last time about the idea that a style is a way of
  • 00:13 applying a format quickly and you can change it very very easily.
  • 00:20 Let's talk more about some of the pros and cons of using styles.
  • 00:25 So far we've put one custom style in, the assumption style.
  • 00:29 We can put more in in the same way, but look at the existing ones.
  • 00:33 I've already got Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3.
  • 00:37 Look, there's a Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3.
  • 00:40 And these can be modified in the same way as I showed earlier.
  • 00:45 Nice and simple.
  • 00:48 Now, what I would suggest you do if you're putting together a model
  • 00:52 is to create a sort of template with the brand identity.
  • 00:55 So spend some time creating the cell styles that are applicable to your
  • 00:58 company.
  • 01:00 Makes it nice and easier.
  • 01:02 Once you've finished, you can go File > Save As, and
  • 01:05 what you should actually look at doing is saving it not as an Excel Workbook, but
  • 01:09 actually look at saving it as a template instead.
  • 01:12 Either a macro enabled template or without it, whichever you want to do here.
  • 01:17 Then if you open this up, you'll have to save to something else each time,
  • 01:22 and you won't accidentally overwrite a template.
  • 01:26 Now, once you've actually created this you can carry on quite merrily
  • 01:30 creating new workbooks, but what about existing ones?
  • 01:36 Let's pretend this new workbook, Book2, is an existing file,
  • 01:43 and I want to bring in the styles I've created in another workbook.
  • 01:48 I've still got the other workbook open.
  • 01:50 What I can do is I can go to Self Styles here.
  • 01:55 I've got no customized ones in here, it's all the default settings.
  • 01:58 But I can go to Merge Styles.
  • 02:00 If I click on Merge Styles I could actually click on
  • 02:05 any other workbook that's currently open, and there it is, my Liam example.
  • 02:10 Click OK.
  • 02:12 Look.
  • 02:13 It's now brought in the custom style.
  • 02:15 Now if I had 60 different styles and they'd all be there now and
  • 02:19 then I could apply them into this particular model instead.
  • 02:22 It's as simple as that.
  • 02:24 Nice and easy.
  • 02:26 Now there is a downside to styles as well as a good side, so
  • 02:30 you've just go to be careful.
  • 02:33 If you actually copy one worksheet into another by just going copy and
  • 02:38 paste, you can bring all the cell styles in from another workbook.
  • 02:44 Worse, if the two workbooks have the same styles in there already,
  • 02:48 you may make duplicate styles.
  • 02:50 And one of the problems at the moment is you can only select one style at a time.
  • 02:56 So if you want to delete one, you'd have to go through and delete one at a time.
  • 03:02 It's possible, just by copying a sheet,
  • 03:05 to actually create thousands of styles in one go.
  • 03:10 If you must copy from one workbook into another, and
  • 03:15 the original workbook has lots of custom styles in it,
  • 03:19 then consider copying paste special formulas.
  • 03:23 Control C, and then Paste Special Alt E S.
  • 03:28 We're looking here at formulas.
  • 03:29 Stay away from the formats, cuz that might bring everything in.
  • 03:34 Otherwise, styles are very, very useful.
  • 03:37 They save you time on formatting, and
  • 03:39 it's very good to modify the whole workbook in one go.
  • 03:43 I recommend them, but
  • 03:45 do use them sparingly just like many other things that we'll show you in this course.
  • 03:50 Next up, we're going to be looking at something common to both formats and
  • 03:54 styles which is the idea of number formatting.

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