Page 185 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

Using the Format Cells Dialog Box 167 Fun fills, great-looking gradients, and pretty patterns
In Excel 2013, you can not only select new background colors (referred to as fill colors) for the cell selection but you can also assign gradients (fills that gradually go from one color to another) and new dotted and crosshatched patterns to them.
When simply assigning a new fill color to the current cell selection, you can do this either by clicking a new color swatch on the Fill Color button’s drop- down palette (located in the Font group on the Ribbon’s Home tab) or by clicking the swatch in the Background Color area of the Fill tab in the Format Cells dialog box (Ctrl+1) shown in Figure 2-18.
Figure 2-18:
Using the options on the Fill tab to select a new
fill color, gradient, or shading pattern for your cell selection.
✦ To assign a gradient to the cell selection, click the Fill Effects button to open the Fill Effects dialog box. (See Figure 2-19.) Select the beginning gradient color by clicking its swatch on the Color 1 drop-down color pal- ette and the ending gradient color by clicking its swatch on the Color 2 drop-down palette. Note that you can then further refine the gradient by selecting a new shading style option button that determines the direc- tion of the gradient pattern before you click OK.
✦ To add a dotted or crosshatched shading pattern to the cell selection (instead of a gradient — they don’t go together), click the pattern square on the Pattern Style’s drop-down palette. To change the color of the shading pattern (which is by default the black Automatic color), click a color swatch on the Pattern Color’s drop-down palette.
Book II Chapter 2
Formatting Worksheets