Cell Styles in Excel

What is a Cell Style in Excel?

MS Excel is a powerful spreadsheet application with various integrated features and functionalities. It allows various formatting options for data entered into spreadsheets and can manage huge amounts of information. Excel offers various formatting methods to quickly format our worksheets, ranging from just copying the formatting from other cells to predefined conditional formatting. In addition, cell styles in excel is an excellent tool for formatting Excel cells inside sheets.

A cell styles in excel is a collection of various formats or characteristics that we can use inside Excel cells. Despite the fact that we can apply each combined formatting individually, it will take longer. We should use one style to implement a variety of formats simultaneously rather than using different formatting methods separately. A cell style can be used to quickly and effectively alter the sheet's appearance.

A cell styles in excel can contain options for the following six characteristics:

1. Fonts (type, color, and size)
2. Alignment (vertical and horizontal)
3. Number Format
4. Pattern
5. Borders
6. Protection (locked & hidden)

The above forms can be combined into a single cell style. For instance, we may define a style that controls the font colour, cell backdrop colour, italic font style, cell border, and number format. Instead than applying each format separately if we need to utilise such a mix of formatting, we can quickly apply them all by choosing the style we designed. It streamlines the process of applying many formats at once with a few clicks and improves the uniformity of the worksheet's appearance.

How is a Cell Style Helpful in Excel?

Although Excel's cell styles aren't as robust as Word's, they still come in handy and save time by allowing for the rapid application of complicated formatting within the sheet. As an example, imagine that we inserted some information into 40 to 50 cells using a font size of 12 pt. Later, however, we noticed that we should have used 16 point font in all of those cells instead of 12 point. Instead of changing the font size in each related cell, we can update the cell style and insert a 16-point font in this situation. The font size for all cells using that particular style will change automatically to 16 points.

How to Apply a Cell Style?

Excel normally provides two effective ways to apply cell styles to a single cell or a group of cells. Excel comes with a variety of installed cell styles, or we can manually make our own by selecting specific fonts, colours, tints, etc.

The combination of formatting choices that have already been made and are available for us to apply to a chosen cell or range of cells is known as an existing cell style. There are many existing cell styles in Excel, which are classified into four categories: Normal, Bad, Good, and Neutral. Also, the styles are separated based on various data kinds. Data and model, as an example. Nearly everything is covered by the current cell styles, including titles and headings, different coloured elements and accents, currency, and number formats.

To use or apply existing/predefined cell styles in Excel, we must follow these steps:

The single cell or a range of cells to which we want to apply the style must first be chosen.

After choosing the desired cells, click the drop-down icon next to the "Cell Styles" option under the Styles section of the Home tab.

When the Cell Styles drop-down icon is clicked, the following pop-up box appears:

These are the Excel cell styles that are currently in use in the image above. The selected cell or range within the active sheet will immediately receive the desired cell style when we click on it. Also, by dragging the cursor over any certain style, we can see a live preview of it. When our pointer is over a particular style, Excel shows that style temporarily in the cell or range that has been chosen.

We can use Excel's built-in or default cell styles in this way.

1. Good, Bad and Neutral

   Depending on how you want each individual data type to be interpreted, the Good, Bad, and Neutral portion is typically used to represent it. Sometimes it's helpful to be able to quickly scan a document to identify whether the data you're looking at indicate a favourable or unfavourable result.

   For instance, a larger spending number is typically viewed as less favourable, but a higher revenue number is viewed as more favourable. Without a visual reference, it could be simple to forget what you're looking at. This is done in this area of the Cell Styles collection.

2. Data and Model:

   Special sorts of values, such as calculated results, cells where users should input values, cells that display output values, and warning cells, are listed in the Data and Model area of the Cell Styles gallery.

3. Titles and Headings:

   It is quick and simple to locate formatting for different levels of headers according to their importance in the Titles and Headings section. In this section, you can also find a format for the Total cell that has double underlines.

4. Themed Cell Styles:

   The Themed Cell Styles section provides several intensity of colour accents that go along with the workbook's general theme.

5. Number Format:

   There are five possibilities for how numbers in the active or chosen cell(s) are displayed in the Number Format section: comma-style with and without decimals, currency-style with and without decimals, and percent-style.

How to Create a Custom Cell Style?

Click New Cell Style in the Cell Styles dropdown menu to start over from scratch with your own custom cell style in Excel.

By doing this, the Style dialogue box will open, allowing you to change the name in the Style name field and save your custom style under a name of your choice.

Excel bases the design of your new cell style on the format of the currently active cell. In the above example, it is believed that our new style would use a General number format in an 11 point Calibri font. Click the Format button to modify any of the attributes of the style that is being created. The Format Cells dialogue box will open, allowing you to apply and save settings for Number, Alignment, Font, Border, Fill, and Protection.

Once you've made the required adjustments, click OK in both windows to save your custom style, which is then available for reuse across the workbook in the Cell Styles gallery's Custom area.

How to Create a Cell Style by Modifying an Existing Cell Style?

A current cell style can be changed in two different ways.

Method 1 - Duplicate and modify

If there is an existing style that is nearly perfect but not quite, you can use it as a model and make the changes listed below:

• By selecting Duplicate from the context menu when you right-click a style in the Cell Styles gallery, you can duplicate an existing style.
• In the Style name area, rename the style.
• Choose the components to be applied using the Format Cells box by clicking the Format button, then click OK.

This will be saved as a brand-new custom style in the Cell Styles dropdown menu's Custom area.

While using this technique, the original style will remain in the same place.

Method 2 - Modify and overwrite

The following steps can be taken to overwrite the format settings on an existing cell style:

• Choose Modify by performing a right-click on the style name in the Cell Styles gallery.
• Choose the parts that need to be updated using the Format Cells box, then click the Format button, and then click OK.

The original cell style's name will remain the same, but it will now include the formatting options you just made.

It should be noted that built-in cell styles in Excel cannot be changed; however, custom cell styles can be changed or renamed.

How to Remove a Cell Style from Data?

Choose the relevant cell(s) and choose the Normal style from the Good, Bad, and Neutral part of the Cell Styles gallery to change a cell back to the Excel default style.

How to Delete a Predefined or Custom Cell Style?

Right-click on the style name in the Cell Styles gallery and choose Delete to get rid of a cell style. Before this action is carried out, you won't receive a warning notice! When a style is deleted in Excel, all cells in the workbook where it was applied will no longer have their formatting.

Quick Keyboard Shortcuts for Cell Styles

The quickest way to access any particular Excel features or actions is through a keyboard key combination or shortcut. For the majority of its built-in functionality, Excel includes predefined shortcuts. Unfortunately, Excel doesn't have a set key combination for changing cell styles. The Alt key technique, nevertheless, is flawless.

The quick shortcut keys for Excel's tools and commands are activated whenever we hit the Alt key while the Excel window is open. The current window in Excel then shows a specified key (or keys) on built-in tools. To cycle through Excel's tools or features in order, we only need to press the appropriate combination of keys one at a time.

Excel's cell styles can be accessed by pressing the Alt key, the H key, and the J key simultaneously (Alt + H + J). The quick shortcut keys are activated by pressing the Alt key, the Home tab is navigated using the H key, and the Cell Styles ribbon option is accessed with the J key.

After clicking the shortcut key combination, we may choose the appropriate style with the arrow keys and then apply it by pressing the Enter key.

The following keyboard shortcuts must be used for other cell styling options: