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Assigning Custom Number Formats to Styles and Toolbars
Assigning Custom Number of the current workbook. To use these styles
and their custom number formats in other
Formats to Styles and Toolbars workbooks you build, you have to merge the
styles into them. (See Technique 18 for more
on merging styles.)
Frankly, the only problem with custom number for-
mats is that they’re just not that easy to use. To
apply them to a cell selection, you have to open the
Number tab of the Format Cells (Ctrl+1) dialog box,
select Custom in the Category list box, and then find
the darned number format codes in the Type list box
containing that long listing of codes.
To make your custom number formats much more
accessible, I suggest that, at the very least, you assign
the custom number formats to styles that you can
then select from the Style dialog box (or Style drop-
down list if you follow my advice and add this little
gem to the Formatting toolbar or one of your own • Figure 20-3: Assigning a custom number format to a new
design — refer to Figure 18-3 in Technique 18). style.

To hitch one of your custom number formats to a
new style, follow these steps: If you start using a custom number format on a fre-
quent basis, you may want to do more than just
assign the format to a style that you can apply from
1. Apply the custom number format you want
to assign to a style to a sample entry in your the Style dialog box or drop-down list box that you
add to a toolbar. You can add the style to a button
worksheet.
that you add to the Formatting toolbar or a toolbar
To do this, select the cell, open the Number tab of your own design.
of the Format Cells dialog box (Ctrl+1), select
Custom in the Category list box, select the for- To add a style that applies a number format to a but-
mat’s codes in the Type list box, and click OK. ton, follow these three steps:
2. Choose Format➪Style to open the Style
dialog box. 1. Assign the custom number format to a custom
style (as described in the preceding steps).
3. Enter the new name for your style in the Style
Name text box. 2. Record a keystroke macro (see Technique 60)
that selects that style.
When you type the new style name, the Style dia-
log box displays the number codes for the cus- 3. Assign the keystroke macro to a custom button
on one of your toolbars. (See Technique 2.)
tom number format in the Style Includes (By
Example) area, as shown in Figure 20-3.
To see how easy this is, follow along with the steps
4. Click OK to close the Style dialog box. for assigning a custom number format — one that
hides all types of entries in a cell — to a new button
Be sure to save your worksheet after assigning
your custom number formats to new styles. on my Custom Formats toolbar (a toolbar of my own
Keep in mind that styles are saved only as part design):