Excel will then place a dotted line around the selected cell or cells to let you know that something has been copied (in this case, the formatting), and your cursor will change to a paintbrush icon.

By smartly using cell borders, shading, data validation, and other formatting techniques, you can improve the visual appeal of your Excel spreadsheet.

How to Format Relative References in Excel. Microsoft Excel relies on two fundamental reference types when addressing other cells. Absolute references -- which are denoted with a "$" -- lock a ...

Pro Tip: To open formatting options, just select the cell (s) you want to format and press Ctrl-1 (Mac: Command-1). This actually works for anything in Excel: charts elements, images, etc.

When you need to format text in multiple ways in a single cell in Microsoft Excel, then this guide shows you how to do it the easy way.

Microsoft Excel updates cell references when you copy an expression. Here are a couple of workarounds for those rare occasions when you don't want to change the cell references.

Conditional formatting highlights key information in a spreadsheet so it’s easy to see at a glance. This beginner’s guide gets you started using conditional formatting.

How Do I Reference a Cell in Another Worksheet in Excel?. Learning to use Excel worksheets like relational databases can help you save time, eliminating duplication when managing large projects.

When you think VBA code is your only hope, try combing built-it conditional formatting tools. You might just find an easier solution than writing code.