As well as using and modifying Excel's built-in cell styles, you also have the facility of creating your own. One simple way of doing this is to highlight a range of cells and apply all the formatting attributes that you want to add to your style and then turn those attributes into a cell style. When you create your cell style, Excel will pick up all the attributes from the highlighted cells and include them in the style. Let's take an example; let's say we want to create a cell style for headings with text angled at 45 degrees.
We set the text angle to 45 degrees by choosing "Angle Counter Clockwise" from the Alignment section of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon. Let's say that we also want to centre the text horizontally and vertically, change the text colour and make the text bold and slightly larger. Having chosen the relevant options, to create a style which has all these attributes, simply highlight a cell that contains these formats and choose "New Cell Style" from the Cell Styles drop-down menu in the Styles Tab of the Excel Ribbon.
The Style dialogue box will then appear. Here, we can specify a name for our new style: let's say we call it "Angled Heading". The Style dialogue box contains six categories of formatting information which can be activated or deactivated via a series of checkboxes. We can switch off any categories of formatting that don't apply. Thus, for our heading style, we can deactivate the categories "Number", "Border", "Fill", or "Protection"; so we can uncheck all of them. Next to each of the categories, Excel lists the relevant attributes of the highlighted cell(s); so it's not necessary to click on each category to set any options; all we need to do is click OK.
When creating a style in this way, bear in mind that Excel does not apply the style to the cell or cells on which the style was based. To apply the style to the cell(s), you need to do so explicitly by highlighting the cell and choosing the name of your new cell style from the Cell Styles drop-down menu in the Styles section of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon. Having created a cell style, you'll notice that Excel has an extra category called custom in the Cell Styles drop-down menu and it is here that you can choose the style that you just created. Although the highlighted cell doesn't change appearance, it will now be associated with the new style.
We would then proceed to apply the style wherever it was needed throughout our workbook. This, in itself, is a big time-saver. In addition, however, if we decide to change the format of our heading, all we need to do is to modify the attributes associated with our cell style and all of our headings will be automatically updated. - 15634
We set the text angle to 45 degrees by choosing "Angle Counter Clockwise" from the Alignment section of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon. Let's say that we also want to centre the text horizontally and vertically, change the text colour and make the text bold and slightly larger. Having chosen the relevant options, to create a style which has all these attributes, simply highlight a cell that contains these formats and choose "New Cell Style" from the Cell Styles drop-down menu in the Styles Tab of the Excel Ribbon.
The Style dialogue box will then appear. Here, we can specify a name for our new style: let's say we call it "Angled Heading". The Style dialogue box contains six categories of formatting information which can be activated or deactivated via a series of checkboxes. We can switch off any categories of formatting that don't apply. Thus, for our heading style, we can deactivate the categories "Number", "Border", "Fill", or "Protection"; so we can uncheck all of them. Next to each of the categories, Excel lists the relevant attributes of the highlighted cell(s); so it's not necessary to click on each category to set any options; all we need to do is click OK.
When creating a style in this way, bear in mind that Excel does not apply the style to the cell or cells on which the style was based. To apply the style to the cell(s), you need to do so explicitly by highlighting the cell and choosing the name of your new cell style from the Cell Styles drop-down menu in the Styles section of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon. Having created a cell style, you'll notice that Excel has an extra category called custom in the Cell Styles drop-down menu and it is here that you can choose the style that you just created. Although the highlighted cell doesn't change appearance, it will now be associated with the new style.
We would then proceed to apply the style wherever it was needed throughout our workbook. This, in itself, is a big time-saver. In addition, however, if we decide to change the format of our heading, all we need to do is to modify the attributes associated with our cell style and all of our headings will be automatically updated. - 15634
About the Author:
The The writer of this article is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel 2007 Classes at their central London training centre.
