Excel Formatting Cells

Format Painter

A feature found in most Office applications that allows you to quickly copy formatting attributes that you have already applied and "paint" those attributes onto other text, shapes, pictures, and worksheet cells.

Mini toolbar

A formatting tool that appears above or below the shortcut menu when you right-click a cell and that displays the most commonly used formatting commands.

Cell Style

A set of formatting attributes that you can apply to a cell or range of cells more easily than by setting each attribute individually.

Font

A set of text properties that affects the typeface, size, and similar aspects of text.

Dialog Box

A window in which to enter information or make selections.

Fill Color

Add or change the background color of cells

Borders

An outline around a cell or range of cells in a particular color or line weight

orientation of text

Command to rotate text in cell

Underline

Puts a line under text.

Formatting

The appearance properties of items or objects, including fonts, font size, colors, borders, and numbers.

Merged cells

Two or more cells combined into a single cell.

Currency Format

used for general monetary values - places the dollar sign right next to the number - can display negative numbers with a minus sign, in red, with parentheses, or in red with parentheses.

Row Labels

Cells at the beginning of a row of data that contain the name of the row or the category of the row's data. Also called row headers.

Column headers

Cells at the top of a column of data that contain the names of the columns. Also called column labels.

Column data

Cells containing data below the column header.

Accounting Format

Display numbers as monetary values - lines up the currency symbol and decimal points in a column

Bold

Make the text darker and thicker than other text to add emphasis

Alignment

Positioning content or objects horizontally or vertically, lining up with cell borders, in Excel.

Screen Tip

Small windows that display descriptive text when you rest the pointer on a command or control.

Default

Starting setting or option, before any choice is applied by the user.

Wrap Text

To automatically display data on the next line when it is too long to display within the cell's width. Wrapping automatically increases a cell's height.