Excel- Format Background, Special Number, Column Width

Microsoft Excel- Format Background, Special Numbers and set Column Width

Excel provides various features for personalizing your workbook. One of them is changing your workbook’s background.

Format Background

To change your workbook’s background.

Navigate to the tab Page Layout on the ribbon.

Find the option Background, click on it and a dialog box will appear.

You can choose an image stored locally in your system’s hard disk. 

Or you can choose an image via Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine. 

Or you can select one of your images saved in OneDrive Cloud storage.

Here I have chose to select an image from a file on My computer.

Select the appropriate image by browsing and click on open.

After you have selected and opened the image, you’ll notice that you Background is now changed.

To remove a Background in Excel:

Just go to Page Layout and click on Remove Background.

Special Numbers

Excel provides 4 types of special number formatting to format different types of numbers automatically as they are inserted according to the chosen special number formatting option.

• Zip Code: Retains any leading zeros in the value (important for zip codes and of absolutely no importance in arithmetic computations). Example: 05497.
• Zip Code + 4: Automatically separates the first five digits from the last four digits with a hyphen, and retains any leading zeros. Example: 05497-5555.
• Phone Number: The first three numbers of the cell are enclosed within parentheses and the last 4 digits are separated from the middle three digits by a hyphen. Example: (989) 777- 9898
• Social Security Number: Hyphen is put between then digits of the number in the cell. The first three and the last 4 digits are separated by hyphen from the middle two digits. Example: 555-00-9999.

To use special numbers:

1. Right click on the cell or selection of cells you want to format.

2. Click on format

A dialog box will appear. Click on the Special category under the Category List.

3. Select the desired Special Number Formatting option from the given list of options.
4. After doing the above step, the selection of your choice will be formatted to new style. Like this:

Set Column Width in Excel

Set a column to a specific width

1. Select the column or columns that you want to change.
2. On the Home tab, in the Cells group, click Format.

3. Under Cell Size, click Column Width.
4. In the Column width box, type the value that you want.
5. Click OK.

Tip: To quickly set the width of a single column, right-click the selected column, click Column Width, type the value that you want, and then click OK.

Sources:

1. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/change-the-column-width-and-row-height-72f5e3cc-994d-43e8-ae58-9774a0905f46