Let’s say you manage a small business and track monthly sales in Excel. You have a column for sales figures and another for monthly expenses. You use a third column to calculate the profit by subtracting expenses from sales.
You apply the calculation style (light grey background (#F2F2F2), bold font, and orange) to make the profit column stand out. You can quickly spot the calculated profit cells whenever you review the data. The good news is: In Excel, there are pre-defined styles that you can use to apply to different cells.
Applying any of these styles is simple and easy. All you need to do is to select the cell on which you want to apply the style and then apply the style from the cell style dialog box.
Apply Calculation Style in Excel
If you work with a lot of calculations in Excel, which is the core use of Excel in the real world, there’s a specific cell style that you can apply to the cell or a range of cells with a calculation.
In the following example, you have a sum formula in cell A15, and in this cell, we have applied the calculation style from the Excel cell styles.
As you can see, it has an orange font color, light grey as the cell color, and a light border around the cell.
If you try to apply these styles manually you need to use different options, but with the calculation cell style, you can do it with a single click.
Create Your Own Calculation Cell Style
You can also create a new calculation cell style that you can use whenever you want.
- Go to the Home tab and click Cell Styles in the Styles group.
- Select “New Cell Style” at the bottom of the dropdown menu.
- Enter a name for your new style, such as “My Calculation Style.”
- Click Format to open the format dialog box.
- Choose your desired formatting options, such as font color, bold text, and background shading.
- Click OK to Save the style and apply it to the cell.
Merge Calculation Style from a Workbook
Yes, you can import the calculation style from another workbook in Excel. This is specifically helpful when you want to use a style you created in the past.
- First, open the workbook containing the calculation style you want to import and the workbook where you want to use the style.
- After that, go to the Home tab in the destination workbook and click Cell Styles in the Styles group. At the bottom of the Cell Styles menu, click Merge Styles.
- In the end, in the dialog box that appears, select the workbook that contains the styles you want to import and click OK.
The styles from the other workbook, including your calculation style, will now be available in the destination workbook.
Modify a Cell Style
You also have the option to modify any of the cell styles to edit and make a modification to it. It can be a custom style that you have created by you or it can be one of the pre-defined styles. All you need to do is to right-click on the style and click on “Modify”.
This will open the dialog box from where you can make changes to the style and save it.
Title Cell Style
If you want to change a cell value as a title you can apply the title style from the cell styles.
With the title style, you get a thin font style and a font size of 18.
Headings Cell Style
And you also have headings (1-4) styles to use on cell data.
In heading styles, you get a bold font style and a border at the bottom of the cell.
Total Cell Style
You also have a total cell style as well that could be useful for you if you work with accounting data.
