Page 187 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

Using Cell Styles 169
2. Click the Format Painter button (with the paintbrush icon) in the
Clipboard group on the Home tab of the Ribbon.
As soon as you click this button, Excel adds a paintbrush icon to the standard thick white-cross mouse pointer, indicating that the Format Painter is ready to copy the formatting from the sample cell.
3. Drag the mouse pointer through the range of cells that you want for- matted identically to the sample cell.
The moment that you release the mouse button, the cells in the range that you just selected with the Format Painter become formatted the same way as the sample cell.
Normally, using the Format Painter is a one-shot deal because as soon as you release the mouse button after selecting a range of cells with the Format Painter, it turns off, and the mouse pointer reverts back to its normal func- tion of just selecting cells in the worksheet (indicated by the return of the regular thick white-cross icon). If you ever want to keep the Format Painter turned on so that you can use it to format more than one range of cells in the worksheet, you need to double-click the Format Painter button on the Home tab instead of just single-clicking it. When you do this, the Format Painter button remains depressed (indicated by the orange highlight) on the Home tab until you click its command button again. During this time, you can “paint” as many different cell ranges in the worksheet as you desire.
Using Cell Styles
Cell styles combine a number of different formatting aspects that can include number format, text alignment, font and font size, borders, fills, and protection status. (See Book IV, Chapter 1.)
In Excel 2013, cell styles really come alive in the form of the Cell Styles gal- lery that you open by clicking the Cell Styles button in the Styles group on the Ribbon’s Home tab.
The Cell Styles gallery contains loads of ready-made styles you can imme- diately apply to the current cell selection. These predefined cell styles are arranged into various sections: Good, Bad, and Neutral; Data and Model; Titles and Headings; Themed Cell Styles; and Number Format. (See Figure 2-20.)
To apply one of the styles on the Cell Styles gallery, simply click the thumb- nail of the desired style in the gallery after using the Live Preview feature to determine which style looks best on the data in your cell selection.
Book II Chapter 2
Formatting Worksheets