Do you use styles?

[Jon von der Heyden]

The recent Do you have any Excel OCD habits? lounge thread has prompted me to ask this question.

Styles are a great way to maintain consistent formating across your worksheets and workbooks. They are a great time saver! Yet I wonder how many people use them? They are so simple to set-up and apply but even still I suspect that they are under-rated.

Occassionally we see the Too many different cell formats error reported in the question forum. Styles are a great way to reduce the number of unique formatting elements.

More on styles here (thanks Rory for pointing this link out).

 

[SydneyGeek]

Not a great user of styles in Excel (habit, I guess) but extensively in Word and HTML.

That article might be the prompt I need...

Denis

 

[cornflakegirl]

I don't use styles. I do use consistent formatting, with generally only a handful of different cell formats. But even after reading Rory's link, I don't really see how styles will help me. I can't think of a time when I've wanted to change eg background fill colour on all cells formatted in a certain way on my own workbooks. I've quite often wanted to do it on other people's, but unless all the design criminals start using styles, I'm not sure that will help?

 

[Taul]

I've never used styles but I may give it a go based on what I've been reading here.
The only downside I can think of is all the spreadsheets will start to look the same. Ok, I could have several standard styles for different sheet types. I might have a little play with that idea.

 

[SuperFerret]

I've never even considered using them before, not sure why.

Looking into it I can see why they'd be useful, and I might have to look into it for some future projects.

 

[TinaP]

I use them, but infrequently. And I've never created custom styles.

I usually just select a color theme and change everything that way.

 

[litrelord]

I use them in Word but not for cells in Excel. The table styles I find useful in 2007 but so far I've not created any custom styles.

Considering how much my OCD kicks in when I see HTML that doesn't make good use of CSS it's surprising that I don't use this feature. Perhaps now it's been brought to my attention I'll now become obsessed with cell styles for all formatting - thanks for that

Nick

 

[shg]

I seldom format beyond applying styles, and my template workbook has few: Normal, Label, Input, Formula, and Code cover 99% of my requirements.

 

[HalfAce]

Perhaps now it's been brought to my attention I'll now become obsessed with cell styles for all formatting - thanks for that

I've never used styles either. No particular reason I can think of, except I just don't really add a lot of 'visual' formatting to begin with.
For the most part I just highlight the entire sheet, hit Center in the columns and I'm good to go!

 

[Greg Truby]

If the workbook is for my own use? Probably not -- I'll format 'er up to my taste and done.

If the workbook is for a client? Oh hail yeah. I ain't gonna waste time havin' ta hunt down all the input cells to put a new skin on 'em just 'cuz Ralph in Accounting wants his input cells yellow instead of green.