Microsoft Excel is one of the most powerful spreadsheet editors available and many people find it the most important program in the Microsoft Office suit. Microsoft Excel has many features and many people working with it discover new features even after several years of extensive work with this application. The latest version of Microsoft Excel is Excel 2007, which comes along with the Microsoft Office 2007 collection.

Using Excel, you can create spreadsheets and you can see each Excel file as a workbook that has the ability to contain multiple worksheets. Every worksheet has a grid of columns and rows (the columns are designated by letters and the rows by numbers). Each intersection between a column and a row is called a cell. All the cells have a cell address (its corresponding column and row number). You can include almost anything in these cells, from text to numbers and mathematical formulas. The worksheets within a workbook can be accessed by clicking the worksheet tabs found above the status bar. The way the information appears in the Excel cells can be customized to meet your needs. You can change the text’s font and the cell’s attributes. There is a toolbar dedicated to formatting the cells. If this tool bar does not appear in your case, you can make it visible by selecting it from View > Toolbars > Formatting.

If you need to format the cell, use the mouse, click, and hold the left mpouse button to select the cells you want to modify. Right click on the selection to select the Format Cells option from the menu. There are many attributes you can edit for the selected cells: the number, the alignment, the font and the border and pattern. Each of these menus have subsequent settings that you can select based on your requirements (you can enter the date and you can select the date format by choosing the Time option found in the Number menu). You can also select from the different style option Microsoft Excel has to offer you in order to quickly format your worksheet, provide consistency, and create a professional look. You will find the Style drop menu in the formatting toolbar. Excel has several pre-defined styles from which you can choose from: comma, comma [0], currency, currency [0], normal and percent. When you select comma, the program will automatically add commas to the number and two digits beyond a decimal point. When you select the comma [0] setting, the program will use a comma style that rounds to a whole number. The currency style formats he number as currency with a dollar sign, commas, and two digits beyond the decimal point. The currency [0] style rounds to a whole number. The percent style automatically changes the number to a percentage and it will add a percentage sign.

You can also create a style of your own using the Style Dialog Box provided by Microsoft Excel. First you need to select the cells you want to change the style of. Next, choose Format > Style option that you will find in the menu bar. You can click the Modify button to modify the attributes. You can also check all the items under Style includes that the style should format. Next you have to click Add so you can preview the formatting changes. Click Apply to change the style to the new one.