1 Basic Microsoft Excel skills will be required for some of your Glenn College courses and may prove very helpful for others. This four-part tutorial addresses getting started with Excel, performing calculations and functions, conducting data analysis, and basic formatting. If you are interested in watching a 10-minute video overview of basic Excel data creation and formatting, here is a YouTube video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1OVkw2ZQ8. Tutorial 4/4: Basic Formatting This document covers (click each link to skip to that section) Formatting data (cell information) o Data types Resize a column Formatting dollar values Formatting negative numbers o More formatting … worksheet appearance Merge cells Making text appear Bold Changing the cell’s color Changing the font color of text in a cell o Still more formatting … data and worksheet appearance Resizing all of the columns simultaneously Deleting cell contents Deleting a row Insert a new row o Guess what? More formatting (final touches) Centering data in a column Cell and table borders Copy/paste into another program (Microsoft Word) Inserting a basic graph o Formatting graph axes This tutorial uses the Excel file, Tutorial 4_Formatting.xlsx. Open this file. Notice that there are three worksheets. Each of these will be used to demonstrate a data or text formatting skill included in this tutorial. Tutorial 1/4: Getting Started Tutorial 2/4: Calculations & Functions Tutorial 3/4: Statistical Analysis Tutorial 4/4: Basic Formatting
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Basic Microsoft Excel skills will be required for some of your Glenn College courses and may prove very helpful
for others. This four-part tutorial addresses getting started with Excel, performing calculations and functions,
conducting data analysis, and basic formatting.
If you are interested in watching a 10-minute video overview of basic Excel data creation and formatting, here is
a YouTube video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1OVkw2ZQ8.
Tutorial 4/4: Basic Formatting
This document covers (click each link to skip to that section)
Formatting data (cell information)
o Data types
Resize a column
Formatting dollar values
Formatting negative numbers
o More formatting … worksheet appearance
Merge cells
Making text appear Bold
Changing the cell’s color
Changing the font color of text in a cell
o Still more formatting … data and worksheet appearance
Resizing all of the columns simultaneously
Deleting cell contents
Deleting a row
Insert a new row
o Guess what? More formatting (final touches)
Centering data in a column
Cell and table borders
Copy/paste into another program (Microsoft Word)
Inserting a basic graph
o Formatting graph axes
This tutorial uses the Excel file, Tutorial 4_Formatting.xlsx. Open this file.
Notice that there are three worksheets. Each of these will be used to demonstrate a data or text formatting skill
Formatting data Data types The first worksheet in the Tutorial 4 workbook is the unformatted Swimming Pool Project worksheet from the
Calculations & Functions tutorial (Tutorial 3 of 4). Click to that worksheet in the Tutorial 4_Formatting.xlsx file.
Before we begin, let’s resize the first column so that all of the words in column A are visible.
Slowly move the cursor in between the letters of column A and column B until the cursor changes to a black
cross.
With the black cross visible, double click to resize column A to the widest contents in that column. Now all of the
words are visible.
This table needs formatting!
We should never include a
table that looks like this in a
final policy
brief/memo/report.
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The information in this worksheet represents many types of information. There are dollar values, some of which
are negative numbers, and a cell with a percentage. In each case, the unformatted numbers do not convey the
type of information they represent and they are all very difficult to read!
We can tell Excel how to format each of these cells so that the information becomes much more useful.
First, we will format all of the dollar values, the expenses and revenues.
On the Home tab, look for the Number section on the ribbon.
Click the dropdown box arrow next to the word General. These are some of the many format options for cell
contents. General is usually the default type. Notice that there are number formats (currency, accounting,
percentage, fraction) and others (short date, long date, time). Not pictured here is the Text format that does
not apply any decimal or symbol ($) to the information in that cell.
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Let’s try formatting these dollar amounts as Currency and see how it looks.
Go back to the worksheet data by clicking outside the Number formatting list.
Click to select all of the expenses and revenues in cells B4 though G11. (Do not select the discounted values at
this point, because we do not wish to change the discount rate in cell B14 to a Currency format).
With these cells selected, click the Number dropdown box again and select Currency. The format of all of these
cells will change to look like this:
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This is quite an improvement! The expenses and revenues have comma separators which make the large
numbers easier to read. The dollar sign symbol has been added along with two decimal places for cents.
However, the expenses, still have negative signs which might be missed by a reader who is not looking carefully
at this worksheet. Formatting the negative numbers to appear in parentheses, (#), will make the negatives
more explicit. There are two ways to do this.
One way is to keep the Currency formatting but manually specify the treatment of negative numbers.
Select the revenue and expense cells between B4 and G11 again.
Somewhere in the selected areas, right click and choose Format Cells. This window will appear:
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Notice that Currency is highlighted as the category, based on the selection we made earlier.
In the Negative numbers window, choose either of the two treatments that use parentheses. In this context,
since the costs are expected, it may make sense to use the black font, rather than the red font.
Click the third option, ($1,234.10). Click OK.
The cell formatting changes only for the negative numbers in the worksheet. Now the formatting makes the
differences between expenses and revenues very clear.
The second possibility for changing the negative numbers from negative signs to parenthesis is to use a different
cell format.
Select the data between B4 and B11 for the third time.
In the Number section of the Home tab, click the dropdown box next to Currency. Select Accounting.
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The format changes to look like this:
This Accounting format is slightly different from the Currency format. The dollar symbols are left justified and
the numbers are right justified. The negative numbers appear in parentheses, without manually specifying that
treatment.
Let’s stick with the Accounting format. Practice cell formatting by selecting the discounted revenues and
expenses (cells B15 through G18) and changing them to the Accounting format. After the change, the worksheet
should look like this:
Now cell B14, the discount rate, is the only cell that has not been formatted. Click cell B14.
In the Number section of the Home tab, click the dropdown box next to Number. Select Percentage.
The cell formatting should change to appear as a percentage, but this should not change any of the formulas
that link to that cell.
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More formatting … worksheet appearance. The data on this worksheet is much easier to read and accurately represents the type of information contained
in each cell. Still, there are a few other things we could do to make this ready for a policy brief/memo/report.
Formatting the title and bottom line to appear more visible would be a start.
Let’s merge cells to make the table title stretch across the whole width of the table.
Select the cells beginning with A1 and ending in G1. In the Alignment section of the Home tab, click the Merge
& Center button. This will make one cell that stretches from one end of the data area to the other.
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After clicking the Merge & Center button, your worksheet should look like this:
Now, let’s make the text more visible by making the text bold and adding cell shading to the new title cell.
Click the new wide cell. In the Font section of the Home tab, click the B to make the text bold.
We should also change the color of the cell.
After clicking bold, while the cell is still selected, click the dropdown arrow next to the paint can on that same
Font section.
Choose one of the colors by clicking it. I am choosing a swimming pool blue…
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The title should now be in bold font on a blue cell background, like this:
Now this table has a nice heading, but a busy reader might like the bottom line, the discounted project profit
and the net present value, to be highlighted. Practice formatting by selecting cells B18 through F18 and making
them a light gray.
Select cell G18, the net present value (perhaps the most important piece of info in this table) and changing the
background to black. At this point, the worksheet should look like this:
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Clearly, this will not do! The net present value in G18 is no longer visible. This is because the number was in
black font and we just changed the cell background to black. We need to change the font color in this cell.
Select cell G18. In that same Font section of the Home tab, click the dropdown box next to the large letter A
with a solid black underline.
Choose the white font by clicking it. Now make the contents of cell G18 bold.
Compare the now fully formatted worksheet (above) to the initial worksheet (below).
This unformatted
information is not only
difficult to read, it is
uninteresting! The
formatted table is a big
improvement.
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Still more formatting … data and worksheet appearance Now let’s turn to the second worksheet in this workbook, Red Winged Blackbirds. Click the worksheet name to
open that worksheet.
This is an unformatted table that was created in Tutorial 3 of 4: Statistical Analysis. (Note: You do not have to
have completed that tutorial to benefit from the formatting skills of this tutorial.)
Like the Swimming Pool Project worksheet, this worksheet contains a lot of unformatted information that is
difficult to read. We can improve this worksheet by formatting the columns, rows, and cells.
Start by resizing all of the columns. You can do this by hovering the cursor between each column letter
(between A and B, for instance) and double clicking once the black cross appears. This approach would be very
time consuming.
Instead, click the blank gray square above row 1 to the left of column A. This highlights the entire worksheet.