Format cells in Excel
In this tutorial, I will teach the basics of format cells. In this, you will learn how to change the look of the number in a cell by changing the number or value itself. We can apply a format in the number tab by selecting categories like general, number, currency, accounting, Date, time, percentage, fraction, scientific, text, special, and custom. Currency formats are used for general monetary values. Use Accounting formats to align decimal points in a column.
Step 1: Click the D3 cell in the sheet and put any value in the cell.
In Excel by default, there is no format applied for numbers. To apply any category you need to open the “format cells” dialog box.
Step 2: Select the cell and use the wanted format. In my case, I selected the D3 cell.
Step 3: Right-click and select the format cells option or Excel format cells shortcut (CTRL + 1).
The format cells window is open, with different tabs in the ribbon.Here is a graphical representation.
You also will get the live preview of format cells example in the navigation panel. Select the ok button.
Now see in the above screenshot the 0.9 changes into 0.90 decimal. The most commonly used command is in the home tab of the number group.
Step 4: Center the number in the Home tab in the Alignment group.
Currency and Accounting
Now I will go to the next category of Currency and accounting. In this category, you have three options as following:
- First of all, the currency symbol appears before the number.
- The currency format also applies to the negative number.
- The number of decimal places to display.
You can also use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+$ to display currency.
In Excel accounting format provides two functions, unlike currency which has three functions.
In this, negative numbers are always shown in parenthesis.
And show two decimal-place numbers.
In this, negative numbers are always shown in parenthesis.
Diffference between Currency and accounting
Currency and accounting format cells have some differences as well such as:
In the currency format place the currency symbol immediately before the first digit of the value in the cell.
In accounting number format, align the currency symbol on the left and the value on the right side and the space between it and zeros up to three decimal places.
But the most commonly used cell formats are mentioned in the ribbon section
Date and format
Excel has a variety of predefined format Date and Time formats for different regions:
You can select the region and get the date and time according to the region.
Percentage format
The percentage formatting shows the value with the symbol of percentage. In this format, the only option available is two decimal places.To apply the percentage format you can also use the shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+%. If you apply this format to the existing number then the value of the cell is multiplied by 100.
Fraction format
This format cells category lets you provide different options to choose from various built-in fraction styles. In this example, fraction 1/10 converts into 1/8.
Scientific format
This category of scientific format is a compressed way to show very large and small numbers.it is commonly used in the og mathematics and data science.
You can understand more with examples such as 0.00000015 can be converted into the form of 1.5 x 10-6 but with scientific notation the number will be displayed as 1.5E-6.The shortcut for this category is Ctrl+Shift+^.As in the previous category in this, the only option available is to decimal places.
Text format
In this category, the cell is formatted as text because Excel treats this as a string. Even if it is a fraction number or any number or date. when you apply this format then you have no option to align text.
Special format
The special format has a format like zip code, Phone number, and social security numbers, and this format is helpful to you for tracking the list and database value.
Custom format
The custom format cells in Excel are available for users to custom and create their formats for numbers, text, date, and time. You can use any combination of formats.
In next tutorial,we learn about how to remove blank rows in excel.
