Microsoft Excel Part 3: Highlighting, Inserting Rows and Columns, Formatting cells, Alignment, Fonts, Sizes

HIGHLIGHTING

Before you change the font, size or format of cells your spreadsheet, Excel will need to know which cells you want to change.

This is done by Highlighting

You can highlight a group of cells, rows, columns or the whole spreadsheet.

To highlight a group of cells
  • Move to any cell
  • Click and hold down the left button of the mouse and drag to another part of the sheet. The area should be highlighted

e.g.


To highlight Rows and Columns

  • Move to the Row margin
  • Click on a number. The row should highlight

e.g.


  • Click on a column heading to highlight a column
  • Dragging across several row numbers or several column headings will highlight groups of rows or columns

To highlight the whole sheet

  • Click on the button at the top of the rows and left of the column headings. e.g.


To highlight separate areas on a sheet

  • Highlight the first area as indicated above
  • Hold down the key and highlight the second area
INSERTING ROWS AND COLUMNS

Excel always inserts arow immediately above the one selected

If entering rows into a set of figures on which a calculation is based e.g. Summing Columns, the new row should be inserted somewhere between existing rows.

Otherwise the formulae will not be updated

To Insert a row or column into our spreadsheet
  • Move to and click on the margin of row 5. (Whole row should highlight.)
  • From the menu Select Insertt,
  • Select Rows (A new row 5 should be inserted)

Note the procedure is the same for inserting a column

Enter the data on folders for the new row 5. Note how the totals automatically update

CHANGING FORMATS

Excel allows us to change the font, size, style, alignment and format ( e.g. no. of decimal points, type of date) of all cells.

 To change fonts and sizes. Example:
  • Move the cursor to cell Al
  • Click and drag the mouse cursor through the text
  • From the ToolBars select the Fonts pull down button
  • Change the Font to ARIAL
  • From the ToolBars select the Size pull down button
  • Change the Size to 12

To change cell alignment. Example:

  • Move to and click on the margin of row 3. (Whole row should highlight.)
  • Select the right align icon . Months of the year should be right-aligned

To change cell STYLE (Bold / Underline / Italics). Example:

  • Highlight the whole of row 9
  • Select the BOLD icon:
  • Experiment similarly with Italic and Underline for other rows and columns

To change cell format , Example: Number of Decimal places

  • Move to cell B4.
  • Click and drag the mouse down to cell E12. To highlight all the numeric cells from B4 to E12
  • From the ToolBars select the Increase Decimal Icon
  • Click twice to add two decimal places to your numbers
  • You should see: