Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life
in Excel 2013 the look and feel of your
worksheet has a lot to do with the
formatting choices you make if we added
some formatting to this Fitness chart
for example we can make it easier to
read and more visually appealing I'd
like to start by selecting the cell that
contains Fitness progress chart and
making the text bigger like a proper
title just go to the font group on the
Home tab and click the drop down arrow
next to size you'll see a preview of the
results as you go down the list
I think 24 looks good maybe we could go
a little bigger though increase and
decrease our two other options for
quickly changing the size of your text
all you have to do is click the command
and perfect to change the actual font
click the drop down arrow here then make
your way down the list you'll get that
live preview again I think I'll go with
this one it's different but still very
easy to read which makes it a good
choice for the title so how about some
color to view your options click the
arrow next to the font color command you
can go with one of the theme colors here
or if you don't see anything you like go
ahead and click more colors this bright
pink should look nice with the color
scheme I have in mind another way to
make your text stand out is to use bold
italic or underline bold should be a
good choice in this example now the text
really stands out and is much easier to
read I think I'm ready to add some
formatting to the rest of the worksheet
at a glance it's kind of hard to tell
the header row from the rest of the
chart because it just isn't distinct we
can easily fix that by giving the cells
a unique fill color all you have to do
is open the menu next to the fill color
command and make your choice dark grey
should be a nice contrast to the pink we
already have in the title now we just
need to change the color of my text to
something lighter you can also use cell
styles to quickly apply different
formatting to your workbook let's give
it a try on the rest of the chart when
you're ready click the cell Styles
command then mouse over the styles for a
preview
and click the one you want as you can
see at this point adding a fill color to
a range of cells causes the lines in
between to disappear I'd like to change
that by adding borders to the entire
chart click the drop down arrow next to
the borders command and you'll find lots
of different options for example you can
add a top and bottom border a thick
outside border even different line
colors and styles for a border that goes
around the outside and in between the
cells
choose all borders I also want to show
you how to change the placement or
alignment of your text using the options
in the alignment group in addition to
left center and right text can also be
aligned to the bottom middle or top of
the cell aligning the text in the middle
Center should make the chart nice and
easy to read finally one of excels most
useful features is its ability to format
dates and numbers for you automatically
for example it would help me to know not
only the dates that I took these
measurements but also the days of the
week all you have to do is click the
drop down arrow next to the number
format command then choose a format in
this case we'll choose the long date you
can accomplish lots of things with data
number formatting take this column of
percentages just numbers with a decimal
place switching to the percentage format
will instantly display them properly
there we go
what a big difference formatting can
make not only does my worksheet look
better than it did before it's also
easier to review the data