Skip to main content

Format your spreadsheet cells with Data Bars

 - You can format the cells on your spreadsheet so that they have bars in them, or even set up a range of numbers to have a colour scale. You can do all that with Conditional Formatting.
In the image below, we've formatted a set of sales figures so that the cells contain data bars:
Data BArs in an Excel cell
Create a new spreadsheet. In A1 enter the text heading January. Widen the A column and then enter any numbers you like in cells A2 to A7:
A simple Excel spreadsheet of one column
Now select the cells A2 to A7. From the Home ribbon at the top of Excel, locate the Styles panel and select the Conditional Formatting item. From the menu, select Data Bars. You'll then see some formatting options appear:
The Data Bars option on the Conditional Formatting menu
You can select a gradient fill for your bars, or a solid fill. Click on one of the Fills to see how it looks on your spreadsheet.
If you click on More Rules, you'll see the following dialogue box appear:
The New Formatting Rules dialogue box
Here, you can select from a wider range of colours by clicking on the Fill dropdown box at the bottom, under Bar Appearance:
The solid fill option for data bars
The Fill dropdown says Solid Fill. Click this dropdown and you can change it to Gradient Fill:
The Gradient Fill option
In the image above, green will be mixed with white to create a gradient colour. (You can't change the white as a gradient colour.)
To get a border colour for your bars, select Solid Border from the Border dropdown list:
The Solid Border option
Once you've selected Solid Border, click the colour square to the right of the dropdown. Select a new colour:
Select a colour for your Solid Border
Click OK on the dialogue box to see your new formatting applied:
Data Bars formatting for an Excel cell
If you have negative values in a cell, you'll see bars to the left and right of a zero point. In the image below, we have some values that are negative and positive:
Negative numbers in an Excel cell
When we add Data Bars conditional formatting, the cell will look like this:
Data Bars for negative numbers

In the next part, you'll see how colour scales can be applied to Excel cells.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to change your Windows XP Desktop Wallpaper - Wallpapers are images that appear in the background on your Desktop, behind all your icons. To change your Desktop wallpaper, do the following: Click anywhere on the Desktop that is not an icon, but click once with your right hand mouse button A menu pops up. The one below Click on  Properties , once with your Left mouse button The following dialogue box pops up This is the Display Properties dialogue box. As you can see, there are tab strips for Themes, Desktop, Screensaver, Appearance, and Settings. Click on the Background tab strip and the dialogue box will change to this one: There is a list of wallpapers we can use. Click on one, and you get a preview of what it will look like. Scroll down to see more wallpapers. If you're satisfied, click the OK button to set your wallpaper. You can use your own images. You are not limited to the ones on the list. If you have an image somewhere on your compute...
Post a Comment
Read more
Beginners PHP  -This is a complete and free PHP programming course for beginners. It's assumed that you already have some HTML skills. But you don't need to be a guru, by any means. If you need a refresher on HTML, then click the link for the Web Design course on the left of this page. Everything you need to get started with this PHP course is set out in section one below. Good luck! Home Page > PHP Section One - An Introduction to PHP 1. What is PHP and Why do I need it? 2. What you need to get started 3. Installing and testing Wampserver 4. Troubleshooting > PHP Two - Getting Started With Variables 1. What is a Variable? 2. Putting text into variables 3. Variables - some practice 4. More variable practice 5. Joining direct text and variable data 6. Adding up in PHP 7. Subtraction 8. Multiplication 9. Division 10. Floating point numbers > PHP Three - Conditional Logic 1. If Statements 2. Using If Statements 3....
Post a Comment
Read more
Finishing the Spreadsheet  - To finish off the Excel spreadsheet you have been working on in this section, we'll add figures for the weekly cost and yearly costs of the chocolate addiction. We'll use AutoFill and SUM. The bottom of our spreadsheet looks like this: We now have how much each individual chocolate bar is costing us each week. The next things to do is to add them all up to arrive at a weekly figure for all chocolate bars. To calculate the weekly cost of the chocolate addiction, you can use the Excel SUM function. But there's an even easier way - use Auto Fill and SUM. Try this. Click inside cell F20 Click inside the Formula bar at the top and enter   = SU When you see the drop down list of functions, double click   SUM Now click inside D15 of you spreadsheet Excel will enter the Cell for you in the formula bar: Notice the marching ants around Cell D15, and that there is a blue border with blue squares Hold your mouse over the bottom r...
Post a Comment
Read more