Tutorial Videos: Formatting Cells

Formatting cells in Excel is similar to the way it is done in Microsoft Word: First select the range, then click the appropriate formatting button.

In Excel you are able to style and change the fonts, their sizes, colors and background colors, as well as ”Underline”, "Bold", "Italic", and alignments – right, left and to the center of the cell.
Note that whenever selecting a range of cells in Excel, one cell will always remain “white” and will seem to be not selected. It's ok – the cell is in fact selected, it remains white just to mention that it is the “Active” cell, meaning that whatever you will type – It will enter into that cell.

Excel offers special formats to numbers: You can determine how many decimal places a number will have, or should it have a thousands separator (the “comma” format). You can also choose a currency symbol to accompany the numbers, whether Dollars, Euros, Pounds and many more.

The Format Painter is especially useful in Excel. In addition to copying the format of one cell to others (fonts, colors, borders etc.) it is very helpful in clearing formats. This is especially relevant when a number appears mistakenly as a date, or with a percentage or a currency symbol. With the painter you can easily cancel this format, and give the number its original and correct appearance.

Sometimes you have a long sentence you wish to fit inside a single cell. The problem is that the default format will make the text extend to the right along the line beyond the the cell's boundaries. Using the "Wrap Text" utility you can enable the cell to keep all the text inside its boundaries, and accept multiple lines written inside it.