In this guide, you will learn how to format Excel worksheets and cells in Microsoft Excel 2019. Raw data in Excel sheets is confusing, dull, and difficult to read and understand without formatting. To make data look more interesting and descriptive, formatting is often used. A good formatting method helps you to find meaning in the spreadsheet without the trouble of going through each and every individual cell. Cells with good formatting will draw your attention to the important cells automatically. There are various methods through which you can format the cells in Excel 2019 version, as mentioned below:
Font, font style, and font size
Background color of the cell(s) and the color of the text in the cell
Borders of the cell(s)
Alignment of the text in the cell(s) (like top, middle, bottom, left, right, and center alignment)
To make any changes in the format of the cell, there are some basic steps. In order to implement any formatting, select the cells that you want to format and right-click on the mouse. A few options will appear, as shown below, in the image:
Select the Format Cells
option from the given choices and one new dialog box will appear. Select the Font
option from the dialog box, as shown in the image below:
In order to change the font, font style, and font size, you need to change the format of the cell(s). Consider the table given below:
A | B | C |
---|---|---|
Item Number | Item Name | Price of the Item |
1 | Pen | 10 |
2 | Lunch Box | 20 |
3 | Bag | 50 |
Consider an example where you need to change the font of the table headers. There are some steps that you need to follow to change the font:
Format Cells
-> select Font
-> select the Arial Black
option from Font -> click OK
. It will look as in the image given below:Now, taking another example with the same table, you can change the font style of the table header. There are similar steps that you will need to follow to change the font style:
Format Cells
-> select Font
-> select the Italic
option from Font style -> click OK
. It will look as in the image given below:In this sub-section, consider another example with the same table and change the font size of the table header. There are similar steps that you will need to follow to change the font style:
Format Cells
-> select Font
-> select the 8
option from Font size -> click OK
. It will look as in the image given below:The default background color of a cell is White
, whereas the default color of the text in a cell is Black
. Consider the following table for formatting:
A | B | C |
---|---|---|
Item Number | Item Name | Price of the Item |
1 | Pen | 10 |
2 | Lunch Box | 20 |
3 | Bag | 50 |
In order to change the background of the cell(s), you need to follow some steps mentioned below:
Step Two: Click on the Home tab.
To change the text color in the cell(s), you need to follow similar steps:
Step Two: Click on the Home tab.
It helps in highlighting the cell(s) and makes it look neat. In order to explain the process of formatting, consider the table given below:
A | B | C |
---|---|---|
Item Number | Item Name | Price of the Item |
1 | Pen | 10 |
2 | Lunch Box | 20 |
3 | Bag | 50 |
You can add borders to the cell(s) by following the few steps mentioned below:
Step Two: Click the Home tab.
All Border
option was selected and the final output table is as shown below:The alignment of the cell(s) refers to the way in which the content of the cell is aligned with the edges of the cell. It helps with a better and clearer view of the data. To explain the method of the alignment formatting, consider the following table:
A | B | C |
---|---|---|
Item Number | Item Name | Price of the Item |
1 | Pen | 10 |
2 | Lunch Box | 20 |
3 | Bag | 50 |
Further, consider an example where you will learn to Center
align the table headers. There are a few steps that you need to follow to perform alignment formatting:
While working in Excel, you may have stumbled upon a case when a certain text in a cell is quite large than the column width and thus most of its portion gets hidden. To reveal the complete text without altering the column width, you can rely on Excel's text wrapping feature.
You can follow the steps mentioned below for text wrapping:
Step One: Select the cell(s) that you want to format.
Numbers are formatted in order to avoid confusion like whether the given number is negative or positive, or if it represents currency, date, time, percentage, text, etc. To explain the method of the number formatting, consider the following table:
A | B | C |
---|---|---|
Item Number | Item Name | Price of the Item |
1 | Pen | 10 |
2 | Lunch Box | 20 |
3 | Bag | 50 |
There are few steps mentioned below for formatting the column Price of the Item
value into a currency format:
C1:C3
as shown in the image below:
Format Cells
and a new dialog box will open. Then select the Number
tab as shown below in the image:Currency
under Category
-> select the value Two
for Decimal places
-> select USD
value for Symbol
->
select value USD 1,234.10
for Negative numbers
-> click OK
. These steps can be seen in the image given below:A | B | C |
---|---|---|
Item Number | Item Name | Price of the Item |
1 | Pen | USD 10:00 |
2 | Lunch Box | USD 20:00 |
3 | Bag | USD 50:00 |
In this guide, you have learned various Excel worksheet and cell formatting methods like styling font properties, changing cell colors, text wrapping, formatting numbers, etc. Now, go ahead and explore more of these Excel features.