Question Learning just basic formatting stuff in Excel?

[Cloo]

Right... in a newish job, making content.

I have something coming up where I suspect I'll be having to create essentially a big table of info in Excel. Just text, no numbers or formulae or anything like that. Only I have no idea how to make Excel behave. I've occasionally used it for my own record keeping purposes (though generally I prefer card systems like Monday these days) but my excels are weird and ugly and I can't seem to make cells behave consistently, because I basically have no clue how to format it, how to stop in scrolling forever, how to make all cells behave the same way. I mean, I do stuff with right clicking, but excel still seems to do random, inconsistent shit at me all the time with no rhyme or reason. I've never had to make anything for anyone else to refer to.

I can't really find training on 'How to just make a nice table in excel'; does anyone have some tips for training or ways to teach myself to just make the fucking thing look tidy and consistent?

 

[two sheds]

If you click the square at the top left (just above the row numbers and to the left of the column letters) and right click then do 'Format cells' it's supposed to apply everything to all cells. Not sure whether it always does, mind.

 

[kalmatthew]

Right... in a newish job, making content.

I have something coming up where I suspect I'll be having to create essentially a big table of info in Excel. Just text, no numbers or formulae or anything like that. Only I have no idea how to make Excel behave. I've occasionally used it for my own record keeping purposes (though generally I prefer card systems like Monday these days) but my excels are weird and ugly and I can't seem to make cells behave consistently, because I basically have no clue how to format it, how to stop in scrolling forever, how to make all cells behave the same way. I mean, I do stuff with right clicking, but excel still seems to do random, inconsistent shit at me all the time with no rhyme or reason. I've never had to make anything for anyone else to refer to.

I can't really find training on 'How to just make a nice table in excel'; does anyone have some tips for training or ways to teach myself to just make the fucking thing look tidy and consistent?

If it's actually a simple table then to be honest you can do a lot worse than using the table function in excel, select the data, go to inset and click table. It then does a fairly nice job of alternating row and column colours as well as bold first column all driven by tick boxes.

 

[gentlegreen]

Yes.
Whole columns or rows or select ranges of cells.
And then there's the one thing I learned on the only MSS Office training I ever did - format painter - to copy the formatting that works elsewhere ..which has been copied in LibreOffice ...

 

[AnnaKarpik]

Whole page 'format cells' will help, also format painter. You can set the row height and column width for all by selecting row numbers and column headers. Decide on text wrapping and alignment before you start filling in text and apply to the whole page.

 

[AnnaKarpik]

Also, if you need a column of categories for example, create a drop down list so the spelling and spacing are identical, without that analysis will be impossble.

 

[killer b]

if it's just text, is excel the best program to use? I'd probably make the tables in word instead, which has different annoying shit going on but is probably a bit easier to make not-horrible-looking pages of text

 

[kalmatthew]

if it's just text, is excel the best program to use? I'd probably make the tables in word instead, which has different annoying shit going on but is probably a bit easier to make not-horrible-looking pages of text

Actually I'd skipped that bit in OP, I agree if it's all text especially if some of it is going over multiple lines then word I'd probably a better choice

 

[Numbers]

The advantage with Excel and where it wipes the floor with Word is filtering.

Your best bet Cloo is Youtube, you can find all sorts on there.

 

[RoyReed]

Is this just for on-screen use, or will it have to look good printed out? If the latter I'd definitely be using tables in Word rather than Excel.

 

[StoneRoad]

Excel does have some advantages over tables in word.

Auto fill and formatting, once you get the hang of it can be helpful.
Some years ago, I spent quite a bit of time playing with the contents of the sub-menus to find out how things worked.
There is usually more than one way to achieve the result you want.

I have been known to do stuff in excel and then copy part into word before printing out.