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Styling
Styling Applying predefined styles in a spreadsheet 93

You can always apply any of the predefined styles
Each Excel workbook you open comes with six pre- to a cell selection by opening the Style dialog box
defined styles. The Normal style is the default style (Format➪Style), selecting the name of the style to
applied to every cell of every new workbook. Figure apply in the Style Name drop-down list box, and then
18-1 shows you the Style dialog box (Format➪Style) clicking OK. But Excel offers a much more direct pro-
displaying the different formatting attributes that the cedure when applying the Comma, Comma (0),
Normal style uses. Keep in mind that anytime you Currency, Currency (0), and Percent styles.
manually apply new formatting attributes to a cell,
either with the buttons on the Formatting toolbar or To apply these styles, select the cells to be format-
the options in the Format Cells dialog box (Ctrl+1), ted and then click the appropriate button(s) on the
these attributes are applied to the basic settings in Formatting toolbar, shown in Figure 18-2. In the case
effect from the cell’s current style. If any of these of the Comma, Currency, and Percent styles, all you
manually selected attributes conflict with attributes have to do is click the corresponding toolbar but-
set by the current style, they override and replace tons. In the case of the Currency (0), which doesn’t
them. display any decimal places, you need to first click
the Currency Style button (which displays two deci-
mal places) and then click the Decrease Decimal but-
tontwo times (which takes the decimal places away).
Likewise, when you want to apply the Comma (0)
style to a cell selection, you click the Comma Style
button and then click the Decrease Decimal button
twice to remove its two decimal places.
Comma Style
Currency Style Decrease Decimal

• Figure 18-1: The Normal style is automatically applied to Percent Style
all the cells in a new workbook.
Increase Decimal
The other predefined styles — Comma, Comma (0), • Figure 18-2: Applying the Currency, Percent, and Comma
Currency, Currency (0), and Percent — are all used styles from the Formatting toolbar.
to format cells containing numeric values with the
most common number formats. As such, their par- To be able to select any style from a drop-down
ticular styles define only a new Number setting — list on the Formatting toolbar (see Figure 18-3),
these styles don’t change the Alignment, Font, Border, customize this toolbar by adding the com-
mand that displays a Style drop-down list box.
Patterns, or Protection settings. When you apply any
This command is located in the Format cate-
of these styles, they replace the General number for-
gories on the Commands tab. (See Technique
mat set by the Normal style with that of their own.
2 for details on customizing toolbars.)