Setting Text Attributes

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 26, 2025)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


The term text attributes refers to how a particular font is presented. For instance, you might use the bold attribute to emphasize your text, or italics might be used to indicate a term being defined (as in the first sentence of this paragraph). Excel refers to these text attributes as font styles. The most common text attributes can be easily applied with a few of the tools available on the Formatting toolbar. There are three text attribute tools provided Bold, Italic, and Underline.

There are other types of text attributes available in Excel, but these cannot be applied from the Formatting toolbar. (At least, not without customizing the toolbar.) Instead you must use the full cell formatting features of Excel. This is done by using the menus, following these steps:

  1. Select the cell (or information within a cell) whose attributes you want to change.
  2. Choose the Cells option from the Format menu. Excel displays the Cells dialog box.
  3. Make sure the Font tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)
  4. Figure 1. The Font tab of the Cells dialog box.

  5. Use the Font Style control to indicate whether the text should be regular, bold, italics, or bold italics.
  6. Use the Underline control to specify any underlining of the text.
  7. Use the check boxes in the Effects area to set any additional attributes.
  8. Click on OK.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2675) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Setting Spacing for Radicals in the Equation Editor

The Equation Editor is a great tool for working with mathematical formulas. If your formula includes a radical symbol, ...

Discover More

Unique Name Entry, Take Two

If you need to make sure that a column contains only unique text values, you can use data validation for the task. This ...

Discover More

Deriving High and Low Non-Zero Values

When analyzing your numeric data, you may need to figure out the largest and smallest numbers in a set of values. If you ...

Discover More

Excel Smarts for Beginners! Featuring the friendly and trusted For Dummies style, this popular guide shows beginners how to get up and running with Excel while also helping more experienced users get comfortable with the newest features. Check out Excel 2019 For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Working with Fonts

Windows allows you to install different fonts that control how information is displayed and printed. This tip gives a ...

Discover More

Copying Formatting

Excel provides a couple of different ways to copy formatting from one cell to another. Perhaps the easiest way is to use ...

Discover More

Copying Formats to a New Worksheet

Do you want to copy formats from one worksheet to another? You can do so easily by using the Format Painter. It even ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is seven less than 8?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.