Borders, shading and cell styles in Excel

Microsoft Excel allows you to apply formatting not only to the content, but also to the cell itself. You can set the borders of the cells, as well as set the fill color. In addition, Excel provides a very useful tool. Styles, which allows even a novice user to apply professional themes to design their documents. In this lesson, you will learn about styles, and also learn how to add borders and shading to cells.

Cell borders and fill colors in Excel

Cell borders and fill color allow you to create clear and defined section borders in your Excel sheet. In the example below, we’ll add borders and shading to cells that contain headers to make them stand out.

Adding Borders

1. Select the cells to which you want to add borders.
2. On the Advanced tab Home click on the arrow next to the command Boundaries. A drop-down menu will appear with different types of borders.
3. Select the required type. In our example, we will choose All borders.
4. Borders will be displayed according to the selected type.

You can draw and erase borders, change the appearance of lines and their color using the tools from the section draw borders at the bottom of the drop down menu.

Add a Fill Color in Excel

1. Select the cells to which you want to add a fill.
2. On the Advanced tab Home click on the arrow next to the command Fill color. A menu with a color palette will appear.
3. Select the desired fill color. When you hover over the different color options, you can see how the background of the selected cells changes. For our example, we will choose a light green color.
4. The selected fill color will appear in the selected cells.

Cell styles in Excel

In addition to manual formatting, you can use ready-made cell styles. Applying styles in Excel is a quick way to add professional formatting to any area of ​​your workbook, such as headings.

How to Apply Styles in Excel

In the following example, we will learn how to apply predefined styles to an already created header.

1. Select the cells you want to change.
2. On the Advanced tab Home press command Cell styles, and then select the appropriate style from the drop-down menu. In our example, we will choose Emphasis 1.
3. The selected style will be applied to the cells.

Applying a style to a cell replaces any formatting in it, except justification. If necessary, you can create your own styles and use them in templates for your projects.