Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

chapter 13: formatting and charts 477

chapter

13

W

hen you start entering information in an Excel spreadsheet, your text

appears in crisp, 10-point Verdana type. But too much of any font on a

background resembling graph paper can look drab, so Excel comes packed

with formatting tools that take spreadsheets from blah to brilliant.

For starters, Excel offers a broad selection of fonts, colors, and borders to make your

sheets stand out. Excel can also import pictures and movies (either clip art provided

by Microsoft or images of your own), and you can even use Excel’s drawing tools to

create your own works of art.

Excel is also expert, of course, at turning your dull numbers into lively charts and

graphs—for many people, that’s the whole point of typing in all those numbers in

the first place.

This chapter covers all of these visual aspects of Excel, including the payoff moment

of printing out your beautifully formatted spreadsheets.

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, how the contents of the

cell are formatted (with or without dollar signs, for example)—anything that affects

how the cell looks.

There are two ways to add formatting to your spreadsheet: by using Excel’s auto-

matic formatting capabilities or by doing the work yourself. Odds are, you’ll be us-

ing both methods.

Formatting and Charts

478 office x for macintosh: the missing manual

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 eccentric layout, AutoFormat

may make quirky design choices.

Formatting

Worksheets

How do I change the default font and other formats?

Ah, you’ve been reading Microsoft’s Top Ten Tech Calls

list, haven’t you?

Whether you want a funky new font to lighten up your

serious number crunching, or you want to switch back to

the Geneva 9-point font of

Office versions gone by, a

quick trip to the Edit→

Preferences→General panel

will solve your problem. Af-

ter you change the standard

font and size (the controls

are right in the middle of the

General panel) and click OK,

Excel displays a warning

message, noting that you

must quit and restart Excel

before the new formatting

takes effect in new spreadsheets.

To apply the changes to old spreadsheets, press c-A to

select the entire sheet, and then change the formatting in

the Format→Cells→Font tab (shown here).

To make broader changes, you can modify the Normal style

(page 493) or create a template—a generic document that

can be used over and over to start new worksheets. Be-

cause a template can hold formatting and text, it’s a great

base for a spreadsheet that you redo regularly (such as a

monthly report).

To create a template, use a new worksheet or a copy of

one that already looks the way you like it. You can select

the entire sheet or specific

sections of it, apply formats

(as described in this chap-

ter), and even include text

(column headings you’ll al-

ways need, for example).

When you finish formatting

the sheet, choose File→

Save As. In the Save dialog

box, enter a name for the

template in the “Save As”

field, and then choose Tem-

plate from the Format menu. Excel gives your file an .xlt

extension and switches the Where pop-up menu to “My

Templates.” Click Save.

Back in Excel, close the template spreadsheet.

Thereafter, whenever you’d like to open a copy of the tem-

plate, choose File→Project Gallery. Click the My Templates

category, click your template, and click OK.

Changing the Default Fonts

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION