Page 182 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

164 Using the Format Cells Dialog Box
Changing the Automatic color in Windows 7
When running Excel 2013 under Windows 7, you can change the Automatic color from the default of black to some other color. To do this, you open the Window Color and Appearance dialog box by right-clicking the Windows 7 desktop and then choosing Personalize from the shortcut menu; click the Window Color button and then click the Advanced Appearance Settings link.
In the Window Color and Appearance dialog box, select Window at the very bottom of the Item drop-down list and then click a new color on the Color drop-down palette in the last row (opposite Font) immediately above the OK and Cancel buttons. Click OK.
To select a new font color from the Font Color drop-down palette in the
Font group on the Ribbon’s Home tab or from the Color drop-down palette on the Font tab of the Format Cells dialog box, click its drop-down button. Both drop-down palettes contain color swatches arranged in two groups: Theme colors to select one of the colors used in Excel’s themes (see Book V, Chapter 2) and Standard colors to select one of the primary Windows colors. To select a font color from either of these two groups, click its color swatch.
If none of the preset colors will do, click the More Colors option at the bottom of the drop-down palette to open the Colors dialog box. This dialog box contains a Standard tab where you can select a new color by clicking its hexagram swatch in the color honeycomb or shade of gray hexagram below. The Custom tab enables you to select a custom color by changing the RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) or HSL (Hue, Saturation, and Luminosity) values. You can do this either by dragging through the color grid and tint slider at the top of the Custom tab or by entering new values in the Red, Green, and Blue (when the RGB Color Model is selected) or the Hue, Sat, and Lum (when the HSL Color Model is selected) text boxes below or by selecting them with their spinner buttons.
Note that Excel adds a swatch for each custom color you select or define to a Recent Colors section that then appears on both the Font Color and Fill Color buttons’ drop-down palettes, making it easy to apply these custom colors to the text and fills of other cells in the worksheet.
Basic borders, fills, and patterns
Excel makes it easy to add borders as well as to assign new background fill colors, gradients, and shading patterns to cells in the worksheet. You can use the borders to outline tables of data — particularly important cells — or to underscore rows of key data. You can also apply various color gradients