Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Formatting Worksheets

When it comes to spreadsheets, the term formatting covers a lot of ground. It refers to the size of the cell, how its borders look, what color fills it, as well as how the contents of the cell are formatted (with or without dollar signs or decimal points, for example)—anything that affects how the cell looks.

Excel offers two ways to add formatting to your spreadsheet: by using Excel’s automatic formatting capabilities or by doing the work yourself. Odds are, you’ll be using both methods.

Automatic Formatting

If you’re not interested in hand-formatting your spreadsheets—or you just don’t have the time—Excel’s AutoFormat tool is a quick way to apply formatting to your sheets. It instructs Excel to study the layout and contents of your spreadsheet and then apply colors, shading, font styles, and other formatting attributes to make the sheet look professional.

Note

AutoFormat is best suited for fairly boring layouts: column headings across the top, row labels at the left side, totals at the bottom, and so on. If your spreadsheet uses a more creative layout, AutoFormat may make quirky design choices.

To use the AutoFormat feature, select the cells you want formatted, and then choose Format → AutoFormat. The AutoFormat dialog box appears, complete with a list of formats on the left (see Figure 13-1). By clicking each one in turn, you’ll see (in the center of the dialog box) that each one is actually a predesigned formatting scheme for a table-like makeover of the selected ...