Microsoft® Office 2008 for Mac® Bible

Chapter 14. Formatting Data and Worksheets

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Formatting numbers

• Changing text formatting

• Using the formatting toolbar and palette

• Using AutoFormat

• Formatting conditionally

• Applying styles

• Using document themes

You've probably heard it said that quality is more important than quantity. In a way, this can apply to Excel worksheets. How your data is presented can be as important is what it says. In business, you can present reams of data to support your point of view, but if it's hard to read or poorly laid out, your audience is likely to tune out or get frustrated. Properly formatting your data not only helps make your worksheets easier for others to understand, it makes them easier to work with.

The designers of Excel have provided you with an array of formatting options for data and text. You can choose from a huge number of data formats, depending on the data and how you want it presented. Excel lets you format numbers in a variety of ways—as date and time values, currency, percentages, fractions, and more.

In addition to data formats, you can apply style formats to cells and worksheets. You can make changes to character and text formatting, altering fonts, sizes, and colors. You can format cell backgrounds as well, by changing colors, shading, and borders. You can even apply conditional formatting that automatically changes the way numbers are displayed depending on the values; for example, you can highlight negative values in red. You can even create and use styles and themes ...