Spreadsheets

Unit 2: Creating More Effective Spreadsheets

Lesson 4: Formatting

How do you use AutoFormat?

In a hurry? Not feeling very creative today? Microsoft Excel has some predefined table formats you can use to quickly format a table of numbers in your spreadsheet. For example, with just a few mouse clicks you can transform:

into:

The following animation shows an example.

Some comments about AutoFormat and the above animation:

1. The example shows a table with both row and column totals. Your table doesn't have to have either. Microsoft Excel is smart enough to detect when you have row and/or column totals and format accordingly.
2. You don't have to accept all of the predefined format a style offers. The button on the AutoFormat dialog box toggles a separate set of options that allows you to uncheck format options you don't want.