Formatting In Microsoft Excel
When formatting text within an Excel worksheet, you have the choice of working at the cell level or at the text level. If you wish to work at the cell level you simply highlight one or more cells and choose your format settings. Any formatting that you choose will then apply to all text within the cell or cells.
For example, if you wish to change the font size of your data in Microsoft Excel, you can use the drop-down menu next to the font name and choose one of the preset sizes. You can also use the Grow Fond and Shrink Font buttons located on the right of the font size. These two buttons simply cycle through the same preset sizes available on the preset size drop-down. You can also use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to move through different sizes. Yet another option is to enter a specific size then press the enter key. When doing so, you are permitted to enter decimals, such as 10.5.
In a similar way, when you want to choose a font, you can highlight the current name and start to type the name of font you have in mind, for example Times new Roman. Once you have typed enough to let Excel know which font you mean, the font name will be displayed and you simply press the Enter key.
Colour can be similarly be applied in two ways in your worksheets either as a background to the cell or to the text inside the cell. Because background colour applies to the cell it cannot be applied at the text level. With the creation of Themes in Excel 2007, Microsoft have made it very easy to come up with colour combinations which look good together.
To work at the text level, you need to be in Edit mode. You can enter Edit mode in two ways: the first is to double-click on any cell; the second is to click once on the cell and then click anywhere in the formula bar. You can tell when you're in Edit mode by the presence of the Cancel and Enter buttons on the left of the formula bar.
When working in Edit mode, it becomes possible to highlight individual characters and change their attributes. For example, say a cell contains the text "Google"; you could highlight each letter individually and change it to the colour used in the Google logo.
The facility of having different formats within the same cell is very useful for headings. It is less useful for the rest of the data in your worksheets since it slows down data entry and makes editing difficult.
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