Formatting Excel Worksheets and Cells

Learn how to format Excel worksheets and cells in Microsoft Excel 2019 including font style, background color, borders, alignment, text wrapping and more.

Sep 14, 2020 • 10 Minute Read

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Introduction

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)
Text wrapping and orientation

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:

Font, Font Style, and Font Size

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

Changing Text Font

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:

Step One: Select all the cells that contain the table header and it will look as in the image given below:

Step Two: Right-click the mouse -> select Format Cells -> select Font -> select the Arial Black option from Font -> click OK. It will look as in the image given below:

Step Three: The resultant table will look as in the image given below:

Changing Text Font Style

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:

Step One: Select all cells that contain the table header and it will look as in the image given below:

Step Two: Right-click the mouse -> select Format Cells -> select Font -> select the Italic option from Font style -> click OK. It will look as in the image given below:

Step Three: The resultant table will look as in the image given below:

Changing Text Font Size

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:

Step One: Select all the cells that contain the table header and it will look as in the image given below:

Step Two: Right-click the mouse -> select Format Cells -> select Font -> select the 8 option from Font size -> click OK. It will look as in the image given below:

Step Three: The resultant table will look as in the image given below:

Background Color of the Cell(s) and the Color of the Text in the Cell

Changing the Background Color of a Cell

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 One: Select the cell(s) as is shown in the image below:

Step Two: Click on the Home tab.
Step Three: Click the downward-pointing arrow that appears to the right of the Fill Color icon and click the color that you want to apply as the background of the cell(s) as shown in the image below:

Step Four: After clicking on the green color, you will have the final table as given below:

Changing Text Color in a Cell

To change the text color in the cell(s), you need to follow similar steps:

Step One: Selecting the cell(s) as shown in the image below:

Step Two: Click on the Home tab.
Step Three: Click the downward-pointing arrow that appears to the right of the Font Color icon and click the color you want to apply as the text color in the cell(s) as shown in the image below:

Step Four: After clicking on the red color you will have the final table as given below:

Borders of the Cell(s)

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 One: Select one or more cells.

Step Two: Click the Home tab.
Step Three: Click the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the Border icon in the Font group. A few options will appear and you can select the type of border you want to add to your cells, as shown in the image given below:

Step Four: Here the All Border option was selected and the final output table is as shown below:

Alignment of the Text in the Cell(s)

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:

Step One: Select the table headers as shown below:

Step Two: Select the middle alignment in the home tab (pointed out by a red arrow), as shown below in the image:

Step Three: The final table will be as shown in the image given below:

Text Wrapping and Orientation

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.
Step Two: Go to the Home tab, then in the Alignment group, click Wrap Text (pointed with red arrow) as shown below in the image:

Formatting Numbers

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:

Step One: Select the cell(s) C1:C3 as shown in the image below:

Step Two: Right-click the mouse and a few options will appear, as shown in the image below:

Step Three: Select Format Cells and a new dialog box will open. Then select the Number tab as shown below in the image:

Step Four: Select 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:

Step Five: The output table is 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

Conclusion

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.