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 could 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 are 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 gray should be a nice contrast to the pink we already have in the title.
Now I 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 Excel's most useful features is its ability to format dates and numbers
for you automatically.
For example, it would help me to know not only that 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 date and 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.