My 9 Favorite Excel Formatting Tricks That Will Make My Data Pop

Excel is a powerful tool for working with data, but raw spreadsheets can often look boring and overwhelming. Fortunately, a few simple formatting tricks can completely transform your data to make it more visually appealing and easier to interpret.

1 Hide the Excel grid

By default, Microsoft Excel displays a series of faint lines between cells, i.e. grids. While a grid can help you navigate a table, it can also make your data look cluttered and less presentable. You can hide the grille for a polished clean look.

To do this, simply go to View card etc Show group, uncheck it Grid box. Your data will instantly be cleaner, making charts, tables and formatted cells stand out. If needed, you can add borders to specific cells or ranges to highlight important data.

I also like to create a big, bold header at the top of the table for the heading. This header spans multiple cells and describes the purpose of the table in a few words.

To create such a header, go to the top of the Excel spreadsheet and insert a blank row (Right clickand then select Insertand The whole series) if you already have content in the top row. Select next A1 and enter a table name and then select a range of cells to contain the table name. Finally, go to Home tap the tab Merge and centerand all selected cells will be merged with your title in the middle.

3 Format your data as a table

I like to format large datasets in Excel as tables. Excel spreadsheets look less cumbersome and easier to manage. Although the table style may seem generic, it is a useful trick that can be used to enhance the presentation of data in Excel.

To format the data as a table in Excel, select the desired range of cells and go to Home tab, select Format as a table from Styles section and select Table style you prefer light, medium and dark variants.

If the default options put you off, you can create a new style by going to New table style and customizing colors, borders, and fonts to match your preferences.

4 Leave a space between dates and headings

Formatting doesn’t have to be complicated to change. It can be as simple as leaving some space between your dataset and the table row and column headers. When your data is crammed directly against headings, it can look cluttered and harder to interpret at first glance.

To create this visual separation, you can insert a blank row and column before running the data. This can be particularly useful when presenting large datasets, as it prevents the information from becoming too dense.

5 Keep the text wrapped in their cells

When working with data that contains long labels or descriptions, you can use text wrapping to preserve column width and make the text easier to read. By default, Excel allows text to overflow into adjacent empty columns or truncates characters if the next column contains data.

You can enable text wrapping by selecting a cell or group of cells with long text strings and then going to Home tab and click Wrap text. Wrapping text ensures that long text stays in the cell and automatically wraps to the next line without changing the column width.

6 Use Contrast to make text easier to read

It never hurts to keep basic graphic design principles in mind when styling an Excel spreadsheet. The contrast between the text color and the background color makes the table easier to read.

By default, Excel uses a combination of high contrast for text and background. You can change the color of the text using Font color and select a different background color from Fill color menu. Excel will preview the text and tell you whether the color combination is high or low contrast. You can also check the box at the top to show only high contrast colors.

7 Use special formatting for formulas

Another formatting trick I’ve found useful is using special formatting for cells that have formulas. This makes it easier to distinguish between regular, entered data and calculated results in complex spreadsheets.

To format formula cells, select cells containing formulas and highlight them with a unique background color from Fill color menu or bold (Ctrl+B).

Using this formatting trick will help you and others quickly identify where the calculations are happening, making it easier to audit the table for errors. This trick is especially valuable when sharing workbooks with colleagues or clients.

Vertical headers are a lesser-known formatting trick for organizing tabular data in a more efficient and compact layout. These headings can save space and make the table easier to read. You can either change the column headers to vertical text or create row headers with vertical orientation.

To use vertical headers, select the cells containing your header and go to Home tap on Orientation icon and select Vertical text. However, Vertical text adds spaces between letters, which could push the text beyond the cell boundaries. You can fix this by going to Home card, selection Formatand Automatically adjust line height. Place Vertical textyou can also choose any of Angle or Rotate options in Orientation menu.

This trick works especially well for tables with narrow columns and when you’re trying to fit everything on one page without wrapping the text.

9 Use the Format Painter tool

The Format Painter is very useful when you need to reuse the same formatting—color, font style, or font size—in different cells. It’s one of those extremely easy-to-use features that will save you time in Microsoft Excel.

Format Painter is basically copy and paste for formatting. You can find it under Home card in Box section. Select the formatted text you want to copy, click Painter of formatsand select a cell, group of cells, or row/column to apply formatting to. Done!

Formatting makes the difference between a bland, cookie-cutter table and one that’s bold, clear, and professional. While aesthetics are important, clarity of communication is the main reason you should be careful with Excel spreadsheet formatting.