How to Style your Text in Excel Worksheets
Styling your text in Excel Worksheets is more important than you my initially think. The style of your worksheet can make it more efficient, show greater professionalism & increase usability.
We have put together a short lesson on the basics of styling your text. We will look at how to make the changes as well as tips for choosing the correct style. Let’s learn about;
Text Font, Colour & Size
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Moving text in a cell
Text Font, Colour & Size
Before we begin to look at making changes we need to find where our options actually are. In the Home tab of Excel to the left hand side you will see all of these buttons on the left hand side.
Now we have found our style options, we can look at changing the style. Firstly we need to select the cell we wish to change. You can do this by simply clicking on your cell or click & drag to highlight a range of cells.
Once you have selected your cell(s), they will have a thick black border around them.
Our cell(s) are now selected, so we can choose our font, colour & size styles. This is done on the drop down arrow shown in the pictures below.
How to choose your font style?
When it comes to styling your text, you need to ensure it is fit for purpose. Consider;
- What your spreadsheet is for?
- Who will see your spreadsheet?
- How efficient does it need to be?
Asking these questions will enable you to choose the best font. For a professional client spreadsheet you want a smart looking font, nothing flamboyant! If you use a set company text this would be ideal. For a more relaxed & creative text, go wild! Choose a text you love. If efficiency is your thing, ensure the font is clear and easy to read on first glance.
We can also look at colour & text size at the same time. Again ensure the colour & size suit the purpose of your worksheet. Professional styled worksheets are best suited to black text or your company colours. You can also use colour & size to ensure certain areas of the worksheet stand out as more important.
Another useful styling choice are the Bold, Underline & Italics options. Ideal for titles or making text appear different without using separate fonts. These options can simply be clicked to turn them on/off, when you have the cell(s) selected. When the button is turned on, Bold in our example, it has an orange background.
Moving Text Within The Cell
When you type text into a cell within Excel, it is automatically put at the left hand side of that cell. This makes sense of course as we read from left to right and normally start typing documents, emails or writing letters in the same direction. However sometimes it makes more sense in spreadsheets to centre your text (good for titles) or move it to the right hand side of the cell (great for accounting).
We are given simple buttons to on the home tab to do this. With your cell(s) selected all you need to do is click on the left, centre or right buttons shown here. Just as before when the option is “turned on” it will have an orange background.
Excel also gives the option to move our text to the top, middle or bottom of the cell. So you really can have it anywhere within the cell! We do this by selecting cells & choosing the option shown here.
Here are a few examples if you are not sure how it will look. Remember the cell with the black border around it is the one selected and the alignment options with the orange backgrounds are turned on.
Now you have learnt how to style your text, your spreadsheets will look more professional, be easier to use & hopefully save you time. Use your new found Excel skills to work on your companies staff training plan, read our blog on how to do this here.
If you would like to learn more basics of Excel, then our Beginners workshop is just what you are looking for. Delivered in small groups for individual tailoring. Perfect for those needing to make a start with Excel and improve the efficiency & effectiveness of their spreadsheets.
Available as face to face training and over Zoom with our virtual classroom.
