Need MS-Excel advice on customizing cells and its formats

Need MS-Excel advice on customizing cells and its formats

How to change cell formats.

Just right click on the cell. On the menu that appears, select Format Cells. You will get the Format Cells Dialog box. In the Number tab you will get the categories General, Number, Currency, Text, Date, Time, Percentage…. etc in left side. From the right side you'll see a sample, few configuration options and description about each category. Select which category and configuration you want your cell as to be. In the Alignment tab you can set your text direction on the cell and many more.

In the Font tab you can select the font, font style, size. etc to your text in the cell. Border tab will give you give you some bordering style to the cell and Fill tab provides the background color of the cell. Protection tab gives you the opportunity to lock cell or hide cell to other users. This will effect only after you take necessary changes in Review tab on the ribbon (toolbar on the top). Most of the tabs on the Format Cells Dialog box can be seen on the Home tab in the ribbon because they are the mostly used formatting. Try to identify each of them.

How to select more than one column, row or cell in Excel.

You can click on a any column letter and by holding the mouse, move the mouse pointer to another letter and release. You can see multiple columns selected. Another method to do this is, click the column letter, and click another column letter by pressing the SHIFT key. If the columns you want to be selecting not nearby, click each column letter with pressing CTRL key. Follow the above steps for rows and cells. You can play with the Home, End, Pg Up, Pg Dn keys also, and get the experience of using keyboard shortcuts.

How to change the Column background.

Select the columns, right click and get the Format Cells dialog box which I mentioned above. Click the fill tab and from there you can change the background for the columns. As I said before, this option is also in the Home tab on the ribbon. It will show in the Font group with a paint bucket.

When I include a phone numbers in a row the Microsoft excel send me a message formula error.

This may due to the formatting you set to the cell. Use the Format Cells dialog box. Choose the category Special. There you get a Type as Phone Number. Select it and OK. The thing is done.