By the time I answered Lisa's question from yesterday, she had already formatted her spreadsheet, using a clever method that I would not have thought of. Episode 932 will show you how to format every other row using the fill handle.
This video is the podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
This video is the podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey. Alright. Welcome back to the MrExcel netcast. I'm Bill Jelen.
Yesterday, we talked about Lisa. Lisa called.
She wanted to format every other row in her data set, and as I was sitting there trying to figure out which way would be the easiest way to describe to Lisa, you know, I sent her an email.
She's like, oh, I already figured it out.
I said, really, what did you do, and Lisa came up with a method that I hadn't even thought of.
This is pretty cool.
It actually starts out being a little destructive but actually solves a problem.
The beautiful thing about Lisa's option is we're not stuck with those list 1 and list 2 that I talked about yesterday.
You can choose any colors you want.
So, we're going to format the first row in red and the second row in blue.
This will be a very obnoxious format.
I'm sure you would use something better than this.
So, we'll go with the red and blue.
Lisa formatted the first couple of rows and then she selected those rows.
Are you ready for this?
This next one, it's going to seem horrible at first.
Double click the fill handle, alright, and a couple of things happen.
First thing that happens is we get the red and blue.
The bad thing that happens is it screwed up all of our data.
You can see all of the numbers just changed, but what Lisa does, she doesn't panic, she comes down here to this little dropdown that appears in the lower right-hand corner, opens the dropdown, and says FILL FORMATTING ONLY, and all of our original numbers and data come flying back, and she's now applied every other row formatting.
Isn't that beautiful?
I said, Lisa, alright.
Good.
I'm giving you an Excel master pin for that one.
A great idea.
It's much more flexible in that we can use any colors we want.
It does kind of take your breath away when you lose all of your data but, you know, it's all there in the undo stack, and basically it'll come flying back when you choose FILL FORMATTING ONLY.
So, another way to do formatting of every other row.
Still, though, we have the problem that, if we insert some new rows, the formatting is going to get screwed up.
Tomorrow, we'll talk about a better way to solve that problem where it is actually dynamic and can deal with the rows being inserted.
Thanks for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Yesterday, we talked about Lisa. Lisa called.
She wanted to format every other row in her data set, and as I was sitting there trying to figure out which way would be the easiest way to describe to Lisa, you know, I sent her an email.
She's like, oh, I already figured it out.
I said, really, what did you do, and Lisa came up with a method that I hadn't even thought of.
This is pretty cool.
It actually starts out being a little destructive but actually solves a problem.
The beautiful thing about Lisa's option is we're not stuck with those list 1 and list 2 that I talked about yesterday.
You can choose any colors you want.
So, we're going to format the first row in red and the second row in blue.
This will be a very obnoxious format.
I'm sure you would use something better than this.
So, we'll go with the red and blue.
Lisa formatted the first couple of rows and then she selected those rows.
Are you ready for this?
This next one, it's going to seem horrible at first.
Double click the fill handle, alright, and a couple of things happen.
First thing that happens is we get the red and blue.
The bad thing that happens is it screwed up all of our data.
You can see all of the numbers just changed, but what Lisa does, she doesn't panic, she comes down here to this little dropdown that appears in the lower right-hand corner, opens the dropdown, and says FILL FORMATTING ONLY, and all of our original numbers and data come flying back, and she's now applied every other row formatting.
Isn't that beautiful?
I said, Lisa, alright.
Good.
I'm giving you an Excel master pin for that one.
A great idea.
It's much more flexible in that we can use any colors we want.
It does kind of take your breath away when you lose all of your data but, you know, it's all there in the undo stack, and basically it'll come flying back when you choose FILL FORMATTING ONLY.
So, another way to do formatting of every other row.
Still, though, we have the problem that, if we insert some new rows, the formatting is going to get screwed up.
Tomorrow, we'll talk about a better way to solve that problem where it is actually dynamic and can deal with the rows being inserted.
Thanks for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
