Good Looking Spreadsheets

It really is important for you to make spreadsheets that look good.  

This means that they should be informative and attractive.  Columns widths need to be adjusted so that take an appropriate amount of space.

You can use colors and lines to set off headers or to highlight cells containing important information.

Header and footers hold important identifying information and are important when you print your spreadsheet.

In the end, remember that spreadsheets should not be dull and boring.  You have the tools to make them interesting.

Spreadsheets Hold Lists

Let's focus on spreadsheets that hold lists.  This is probably the primary use of spreadsheets, even though most people emphasize their ability to do calculations.

What kind of lists go into a spreadsheet?

How about schedules and assignments.  Or inventories.  Even address books work well in this format.

Overall, lists that are stored in a spreadsheet have the following characteristics:

• They are neat and organized.
• They are updated periodically.
• They are often sorted into order, or even resorted into several different orders.

Column Headers

You will generally include your own headers in the first row of a spreadsheet.

This identifies the contents of each of the columns.

Useful Header Formatting

Using headers is very important, but it presents a major problem for most spreadsheet users.

You want the headers to be descriptive, but the amount of space in the spreadsheet cell is limited.

Most people simply type in an abbreviation for the header, but that is often an unacceptable compromise.

There are several things that you can do instead of abbreviating your headers.

• You can adjust the column width to accommodate a longer header.
• You can wrap the text so that the header occupies several lines.  
• You can angle the text.

We'll look at each of these alternatives.

Adjusting Column Widths

The first way to accommodate long headers is to change the width of the column.

You can change the width of a column by clicking and dragging on the right boundary between two columns.

Do this at the top of the spreadsheet on top of the column headers.  You can tell that you're at the right place when the cursor changes from a big plus ("+") sign to a vertical bar with short arrows pointing left and right.

There is a shortcut that you should know about.  If you double click on the right boundary between the two columns, Excel will automatically adjust the column width to accommodate the longest entry in the column.

Wrapping Header text

The second way to accommodate long headers uses a completely different approach.

This is because it is not unusual to want a relatively long header compared to the size of  the entries in the column below.  That's the case in the example shown here.

Note that you can't warp the header text by pressing "Enter" since "Enter" means move to the next cell.

You need to do something else.

By the way, this is one of Excel's least known options.  Yet it is essential if you are going to make good looking spreadsheets.

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Let's assume that you want all the header cells, in this case all the cells in row 1, to have wrapped text headers.

Select the first row to get started.

The Wrap-Text Menu

Next go to the Format menu and choose the "Cells..." command.

This will open up a dialog box.

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Click on the Alignment Tab of the dialog box.

Then you need to go to two places and make changes.

First, make sure that the choice in the vertical popdown menu is "top."  (The default is "bottom.")

Second, put a check in the "Wrap Text" text control box.

That's quite a bit of work, but well worth it!