formatting your spreadsheets can make it
look nicer and make it easier to use
you'll be amazed at how adding color
borders and different shading can really
make information in your spreadsheets
easier to read and use in Excel 2007
formatting your information as a table
is effortless to format your information
as a table just select any cell that
contains information then in the Styles
group on the Home tab click the format
as table command a list of predefined
tables appear all you need to do is
left-click a table style to select it
let's see this one looks nice once you
select the table style you want a dialog
box will appear Excel has automatically
selected the cells for your table we can
see from the range listed that it has
selected cells a1 to g47
if you need to change that you can do
that right in this field it looks like I
need to include g48 there if your table
has headings like ours be sure this box
is selected so that Excel knows your
table has headings and click OK and now
we can see that our table has been
formatted with the table style we chose
by default the table will be set up with
the drop-down arrows in the header so
that we can filter the table if we'd
like to you can also modify your table
once you've inserted it as you can see
we're on the table tools design tab this
tab is visible once we are working in a
table for example if I click off the
table that tab disappears as soon as I
select a cell inside the table the tab
is visible and active from
here you can make some changes to the
way the table appears you can select a
different table style in the tables
Styles group or in the table Styles
options group you can take away the
header row you can remove banded rows or
columns
I'll leave the bandit rows because I
think it makes this spreadsheets easier
to read you can even make the first and
the last columns bold all of these
options can be toggled on and off by
selecting and deselecting the box you
have some other options in the tools and
external data table groups but we're not
going to explore those in this video and
the properties group you can name your
table and you can click resize table to
change the cells that make up your table
as you may have noticed in Excel there
are often many ways you can accomplish
the same task in addition to using the
format as table command you can also
select the insert tab and click the
table command from here the process is
the same as what we just went through to
insert a table formatting tables give
spreadsheets a polished and professional
look in Excel 2007 you can spruce up
your spreadsheets quicker than ever
before