Creating a spreadsheet – Formatting
Formatting a spreadsheet can be a very daunting task – many people believed that this is something that they wouldn’t have to deal every single day. But believe it or not, formatting spreadsheets properly eventually saves you a lot of time. Brilliant spreadsheet worksheets with proper formatting makes one’s work more efficient, and one individual become more productive altogether.
If you come to think of it, Spreadsheets in Excel may look complicated especially with a lot of cells, rows, formulas and other formatting options that are seen in a single spread sheet. But things don’t have to look complicated at most times. Let’s just keep it simple and here are some tips on formatting a spreadsheet template for you to use to save tons of time and effort:
- Keeping it simple is the top secret of efficient spreadsheets in Excel. If you’re working on a default template for spreadsheet that you’d use on a daily basis, it is always recommended to keep it as simple as possible. Many individuals take their time and spend most of their time on formatting adding different colors, inserting whistles, bells, flowers and even other icons that are not necessarily needed within that spread sheet. First off, this is a complete mess to the user and it eats too much of your time. Secondly, if others would check your spreadsheet , they would find it difficult to understand your spread sheet template.
- Do not over do things – never over format. If you want to get started, you can download an example spreadsheet or an example template that you can use as a guide. Making it easy for other eyes to read and follow your spreadsheet is a secret to a brilliant Microsoft Excel Worksheet.
- Use universal colors if in case you need to change the text fonts and colors. Black, grey, red and white – these are some of the most commonly used colors in Microsoft Excel templates and you may want to follow this rule. Remember, rule #1 – keep it simple.
- With regard to the formatting of the texts, always go to the default formatting. This means that the text is aligned to the left, numbers aligned to the right and so on. You shouldn’t take too much of your time formatting cells and numbers. You can leave it as it is and don’t waste another second trying to change everything for the sake of “it could look even better” attitude. Remember, an ideal spreadsheet template should be easy to use and understand. It’s not for a “looking better” goal, but it’s more on, easier to understand and simpler to manage and edit.
- Excel spreadsheets would be easier if you only format texts and numbers that REALLY need formatting. For example – you wanted your TOTAL number of expenses or TOTAL amount of money spent for the previous month. You can increase its font size and you can put it in bold making it easier for people to understand and notice that you have a final amount listed just underneath some of your rows and columns information.
Formatting a spreadsheet and creating your Microsoft Excel templates shouldn’t take too much of your time, if you follow the five important tips listed above.
