Format Cells Using Styles in Excel

Key Highlights

• Using Native Cell Styles in Excel can be a time-consuming, inefficient, and inconsistent way of applying proper branding standards to models.
• Macabacus Custom Styles allows you to have an efficient way to apply proper styles that consistently align with your branding guidelines.

Formatting with Cell Styles in Excel

Formatting data in Excel can be a time-consuming and repetitive task. It’s crucial to ensure that your financial reports are clear, consistent, and adhere to your organization’s branding. In this blog post, we’ll show you the difference between Excel’s native styles and Macabacus’ custom styles, taking a look at how Macabacus helps you streamline your workflow while ensuring your financial reports are aligned to your branding standards. 

Cell styles in Excel are predefined formatting options that allow you to quickly apply a consistent and professional look to your models using a collection of formatting attributes such as font size, color, alignment, borders, and number formats. To use these styles natively in Excel, you would take the following steps:

1. Select the cells you want to format with a cell style.
2. Go to the “Home” tab on the Excel ribbon.
3. In the “Styles” group, you’ll find a button called “Cell Styles.” Click on it to open the cell styles gallery.
4. The cell styles gallery displays a variety of predefined styles. Click on the style you want to apply, and Excel will instantly apply the formatting to your selected cells.

However, there are drawbacks to keep in mind when using native cell styles in Excel. These styles are specific to the workbook, meaning when you share your model containing applied styles with a colleague, they might not have the same styles used in the model accessible to them. This can lead to inconsistent branding across your team. These styles are also inefficient to use as they cannot be applied with keyboard shortcuts, requiring use of your mouse for applying them to the appropriate cells.

Formatting with Macabacus Custom Styles

Using custom styles with Macabacus allows you to quickly and consistently apply brand compliant formatting to cells in your models. To do this, you can create custom style cycles that enable the use of keyboard shortcuts to cycle through several different options efficiently. To create these custom style cycles, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to Excel > Format > Styles within the Settings dialogue.
2. Click the “+” button to create a new style in the cycle. Select all of the formatting and other properties to be included in this specific style
3. Add up to 8 different styles as a part of a cycle
4. Once you’ve created all the styles you need for a cycle, you can apply the them to your Excel workbook using the keyboard shortcuts. By default, the custom style cycle 1 shortcut is Ctrl + Alt + 1. Use these shortcuts and see the styles applied. It’s that simple!

In summary, using Macabacus to format custom styles in Excel is an efficient and straightforward way to streamline your workflow and ensure your financial reports adhere to your organization’s branding guidelines. Follow the steps outlined in this blog post to set up custom styles and start saving time today.

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Start a free trial of Macabacus today and experience how it can help streamline your workflow and improve your financial reports’ consistency.