rAdvanced Excel:

Font Selection:
We can customize the font according to our needs in Excel. This can be done
in many ways. I prefer using the Ribbon button shortcuts to do this task as it is very
convenient to use. We can format entire cell text or a part of text according to our
needs. As shown below select a cell and change the font type and color from Font
section which is highlighted below.

Bold, Underline and Italic can be applied by using keyboard short cuts. Please find
below keyboard short cuts for the same.
Bold Ctrl+B

UnderlineCtrl+U
ItalicCtrl+I
I have customized text which was entered in the Excel earlier as below.

Back ground formatting:

Here we will see how to fill colors in cells or a range of cells. We will see later about
inserting a background picture.
Select the cell or range of cells as below and fill the color using color filler as shown
below.

Merge and Center:

We can merger a range of cells using Merger & Center functionality.

There are many options in merge & Center as shown below.

Depending on the requirements we can choose one of them.

Tip: Try to avoid using merging cells it will create problem with VBA. Instead use
cell formatting which will give almost identical result as merge and wont affect
VBA.
Styles:
Instead of selecting each and every cell and formatting it, we can use excel Style
functionality to achieve the same result.

As shown above Excel has 3 types of Styles namely Conditional Formatting, Format
as Table and Cells Styles. We will see one by one in detail.
Conditional Formatting:
Conditional Formatting has below options.

Below are the Highlight Cells Rules.

I will take below data to show you how conditional formatting works. Copy it and
paste it in an Excel workbook.

Student
Name
S1
S2
S3
S4
S5
S6
S7
S8
S9
S10
S11
S12
S13
S14
S15
S16

Scienc Englis
Averag
Maths e
h
Total
e
90
79
92
261
87
89.333
95
85
88
268
33
83
84
85
252
84
86
87
88
261
87
89
90
91
270
90
92
56
68
216
72
74.666
93
62
69
224
67
81
77
70
228
76
85.666
82
94
81
257
67
83
90
82
255
85
80
58
90
228
76
51.333
78
44
32
154
33
60
32
28
120
40
42
80
49
171
57
58.333
40
83
52
175
33
35
88
60
183
61

After pasting the above data in excel it will look like the below screen print.

To highlight the students who scored more than 65 in maths follow below procedure.
1. Select Maths column cells as shown below.

2. Select Conditional Formatting >> Highlight Cell Rules >> Greater Than. Below
window will be opened. Type the marks in highlighted cell. And press enter.

3. The result will look like this.

Similarly other cell rules such as Less Than, Between, Equal To, Text that
Contains, A Date Occurring and Duplicate values can be applied.
Top/Bottom Rules:
If we want to know top 10 marks in Science then select science range and then

apply Top 10 item Condition as shown below.

Below Window will appear, Click on Ok.

The result will look like the below one.

Similarly remaining Top/Bottom Rules like Top 10 %, Bottom 10 Items, Bottom

10 %, Above Average and below Average can be applied.

Data Bar:
To view a colored bar in the cell we will use data bars. The length of the data bar
indicates the value in the cell. A longer bar represents a higher value.To apply it

select the entire range and select data bar as shown below.

Select a gradient fill/solid fill according to your needs. After applying the Data Bar to
above selected data the result will look like as shown below

Color Scales:
Color Scale displays a two or three color gradient in a range of selected cells. The
shade of the color represents the value in the cell.
To apply it select a data range and then select a color gradient from Conditional
Formatting>> Color Scales. If apply color scales to above data the result will look
like as shown in the below screen print.

Icon Sets: It is similar to Data Bars and Color Scales. Instead of Data Bars and Colors
it will display icons based on the icon set selected. Please find below an example for
the same.

In the introduction I have mentioned that Excel has very rich reporting features and
conditional formatting just proves that
You may get a doubt like Excel is formatting the celss according to predefined
values. Can we define values for 2/3-color scales,data bars and icon sets? and the
answer is yes, you can. Please follow below procedure to define custom rules for
data bars, icon sets and color scales.
1. Select the data range for which you want to define the new rule.

2. Select New Rule option from conditional formatting as shjown below.

3. Below window should appear.

4. From Format Style, select a format style for which you want to define a new
rule. I am selecting data bars here.

5. Upon selecting data bar below options will be displayed.

6. Select a type for maximum and minimum and enter values for the same.

7. Also fill the bar fields as per your wish and click on ok.

8. The result will look like below screen print.

9. To Delete the custom format defined above for the selected area, go to clear
rules in Conditional formatting.

10.To edit the rules defined above go to manage rules section in conditional
formatting tab.

Format as Table:
We can format the data entered in an excel sheet as a table. It will help us in
organizing the data in a better way. Format as table will apply filter on the
headers of the table. Filters will help us in analyzing the data easily.
To apply Format as Table functionality select the range of text for which the
feature needs to be applied and then select a style from Style>>Format as
Table. Below screen print describes the same.

Upon selecting a style below window will be displayed.

As the range of cells is already selected, there is no need to change anything in

above window. However if you want to change the range, then just select the
range of cells from excel.
If you select the range again then accordingly above window will populate the
range.
For example if I change the selected range as below highlighted portion in yellow
color, then accordingly range is updated in above window.

After selecting the required range click on OK(I have selected entire range of
cells).The table will be applied as shown below and a new tab named Design
will be enabled.

Using Design tab, we can design the table as per the requirements.
In the below screen print I have checked all the table style options and table
style is quite different from the above one. So using Design tab we can do

customizations on the table.

Cells Styles:
Cell styles has many options as shown below.

Select a range of data and then apply cells as per the requirements. Below I
have provided an example.