Creating Styles

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 11, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Excel provides a powerful feature that allows you to standardize your formatting easily and quickly. These are called styles, which are nothing more than patterns for how you want cells to look. These patterns are saved, using names you define, and can then be reused as you need them.

The quickest way to create a style is to first format a cell manually. It should possess the formatting attributes you want contained in the style. Make all the changes to the font, number format, alignment, color, patterns, and borders that you want. When it appears as you want it to, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Style from the Format menu. You will see the Style dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

    2. Figure 1. The Style dialog box.

  2. In the Style Name field, enter the name you want your style to be known by.
  3. Adjust the check box selections in the balance of the dialog box to indicate which specific attributes should be saved with your style.
  4. Click the Add button to save your style.

You can also define a style that is not based on the current cell, even though Excel always assumes you will use the current cell. This is done by entering the style name in the Style dialog box and then clicking on the Modify button. You will then see the Format Cells dialog box where you can make changes for the style you are defining.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2677) 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. ...

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