Module 2 — Formatting Cells & Numbers

Day 1 · Morning · ~45 minutes Topics: Formatting Cells, Understanding Number Formats, Find & Replace, Checking Spelling, Page Layout and Printing

📥 Practice files: Start workbook · Answer key

Learn it

The one idea that matters most

Formatting changes how a value looks. It never changes the value itself.

Type 1000 into a cell and apply Currency format. The cell now shows $1,000.00. But the value in that cell is still exactly 1000 — click it and check the formula bar. Every calculation still uses 1000.

This matters because it works the other way too: making a cell look like a date does not make it a date, and typing a date as text does not become a real date just because you format it. Formatting is paint, not substance.

Cell formatting (the look)

All on the Home tab:

Group	What you get
Font	Bold, italic, size, colour, Fill Colour (cell background)
Alignment	Left/centre/right, top/middle/bottom, Wrap Text, Merge
Borders	Outline and internal gridlines that actually print

Two habits worth forming immediately:

Give the header row a dark fill and white bold text. It costs five seconds and instantly separates labels from data.
Use Wrap Text, not Merge Cells. Merged cells look tidy and then quietly break sorting, filtering and PivotTables. Avoid merging inside a data table.

Number formats (the meaning)

This is the important half of the module. The Number dropdown on the Home tab (it says “General” until you change it):

Format	`1234.5` displays as	Use for
General	`1234.5`	the default; no opinion
Number	`1,234.50`	general quantities
Currency	`$1,234.50`	money
Accounting	`$ 1,234.50`	money in financial statements — symbols and decimals line up
Percentage	`123450.0%`	proportions — see the warning below
Short Date	`08/05/1903`	dates
Text	`1234.5`	forcing Excel to leave something alone

The percentage trap. Excel stores percentages as decimals: 0.15 is 15%. If you type 15 into a cell and then apply Percentage format, you get 1500%. Either type 15% directly, or type 0.15 and format it.

Accounting vs Currency: in Currency the $ sits tight against the number; in Accounting it is pinned to the left edge of the cell so a column of figures lines up cleanly. Finance reports use Accounting. Now you know why.

Find & Replace

Ctrl + F to find, Ctrl + H to find and replace.

Genuinely useful for cleaning: renaming a category across 5,000 rows, or stripping a stray character out of a column. Click Options for the extra controls — matching case, and “Look in: Values vs Formulas” (searching Values finds what you see; searching Formulas finds what is underneath).

Always check what is selected before you click Replace All. If one cell is selected Excel searches the whole sheet; if a range is selected it only searches that range. And Ctrl + Z still works if it goes wrong.

Getting it onto paper

The Page Layout tab, plus Ctrl + P to preview. Four settings solve nearly every printing complaint:

Orientation → Landscape — wide tables need wide paper
Print Titles → Rows to repeat at top → $1:$1 — repeats your header on every printed page
Scale to Fit → Width: 1 page — stops one stray column spilling onto page 2
Margins → Narrow — buys you space for free

Always press Ctrl + P and look before printing. The preview is the truth.

See it — worked example

Compare the two workbooks side by side.

d1_m2_formatting_start.xlsx holds correct data that is painful to read: everything the same size and colour, sales showing as bare numbers like 1000 and 120, dates as raw serial-looking values, no borders.

d1_m2_formatting_answers.xlsx has exactly the same values, but:

Header row: dark blue fill, white bold text, centred
Sales column: Currency — $1,000.00, $120.00. Note that the .00 and the thousands comma are added by the format; the stored value is still just the whole number 1000
Order Date: Short Date, consistent across every row
Quantity: centred, because short numbers look better centred than ragged
Borders around the whole table
“Smart Home” renamed to “Smart Home Device” throughout by Find & Replace
Landscape orientation with row 1 set to repeat when printed

Click any cell in the Sales column and check the formula bar. It still shows the plain number. The dollar sign lives in the format, not the data.

Do it — practice

Open d1_m2_formatting_start.xlsx and follow the Instructions sheet. You will:

Style the header row (bold, dark fill, white text, centred)
Format Sales as Currency and Order Date as Short Date
Centre the Quantity column
Add All Borders to the table
Use Ctrl + H to replace “Smart Home” with “Smart Home Device”
Set up landscape printing with a repeating header row

Check yourself: compare against d1_m2_formatting_answers.xlsx.

If you get stuck

Problem	Why	Fix
Percentages are 100× too big	You typed `15` not `0.15`	Retype as `15%`, or divide by 100
Date shows as a 5-digit number	Format got reset to General	Home → Number dropdown → Short Date
Replace All changed too much	A range was selected, or the term was too broad	`Ctrl` + `Z`, then use Options → Match entire cell contents
One column keeps printing on its own page	Sheet is wider than the paper	Page Layout → Scale to Fit → Width: 1 page

Check your understanding

You format a cell containing 1000 as Currency. What does SUM see when it reads that cell?
Why do finance reports tend to use Accounting format rather than Currency?
You type 15 and apply Percentage format. What appears, and why?
Which Page Layout setting makes your header row appear on every printed page?

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