Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

chapter 12: basic excel 469

ment, rotation, and indentation; font size, style, and color; cell borders; fill pat-

terns and colors; and whether a cell is locked or hidden. (The first half of Chapter

13 offers much more on these possibilities.)

The Conditional Formatting button, on the other hand, brings up the Condi-

tional Formatting dialog box, in which you can set a series of rules to change a

cell’s formatting automatically depending on what’s happening in the cell. This

feature can do things like make positive numbers in your Profits column appear

in green, and losses in red. (More on conditional formatting in Chapter 13.)

Finally, Column Settings offers a Validation button. It summons a powerful win-

dow called Data Validation, where you can specify limits for the text or numbers

typed into each cell in this column—and what happens if somebody disregards

the limits. Figure 12-24 shows the procedure.

When you’re finished with the Column Settings dialog box—if, indeed, you

opened it at all—click OK. You return to the wizard.

Figure 12-24:

The Data Validation window

has three tabs.

Top: Settings lets you set up

what kind of data should be

entered in a given column, like

numbers only or text of a

specific length.

Middle: Input Message lets you

create an alert message that

will appear when a cell in the

column is selected.

Bottom: Error Alert lets you tell

Excel what kind of angry error

message to display if ...