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Microsoft Excel 2007

 
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Font Formatting

 

If you've been following along with the previous tutorials, you should now have a spreadsheet that looks like this:

A Simple Excel 2007 Spreadheet

Excel 2007 has a much wider range of formatting options than previous versions, and it's relatively easy to turn a dull spreadsheet into something that really shines. We'll start with changing the font.

Choosing a Font in Excel 2007

You can pick a different font for the data you enter into cells, as well as choosing the size you want. The colour of the font, and the cell background, can be changed, too. In Excel 2007, Themes have been introduced, so that you can format your spreadsheets more easily. You'll meet these later. First, we'll see how to change the font type.

  • Highlight cell A1 on your spreadsheet by simply clicking into it
  • Locate the Font panel on the Excel Ribbon at the top of the page:

The Excel 2007 Font Panel

The font in the panel above is set to Calibri. To see more fonts, click the black down arrow:

A list of Fonts in Excel 2007

The good things about Excel 2007 is that when you move your mouse over one of the fonts on the list, the text in your selected cell (A1) will change automatically. This is just a preview, though. When you have decided on the font you want, click it with the left mouse button.

You can change the size of the font in the same way - just choose a new font size from the list of numbers in the drop down box.

If you want to change the font via the Format Cells dialogue box, as you did in previous versions of Excel, you can click the small arrow in the bottom right of the Font panel (the one circled below):

Font options

When you click the arrow, you'll see the Format Cells dialogue box. You can choose various options from this dialogue box: Font size, style, size, etc. The dialogue box looks like this:

Change your Font via the Format Cells dialogue box

You can also set the font colour from here, and add text effects. Click OK when you have made your choices.

When you have changed the font and font size, your A1 cell might look something like this:

The font has been changed for the cell A1

 

The background colour of your cells can be changed, too. We'll see how to do that in the next part of this tutorial.