Transform Black-and-White Spreadsheets to Color by Using a Table

August 28, 2023 - by Bill Jelen

Problem: My worksheet is boring black and white. I want to jazz it up with color.

Strategy: Format the range as a Table. Use the Table Styles gallery to format the spreadsheet. Here’s how you do it:

1. Select one cell in your range of data. Press Ctrl+T or select Insert, Table icon.
2. Excel asks to confirm the location of your table and indicate if there are headers. Click OK.

Press Ctrl+T. The Create Table dialog shows the cell address of the current region and has a checkbox for My Table Has Headers. — Figure 1294. Accept the table range.

3. A new Table Tools Design ribbon tab appears. Use the Table Styles gallery, in conjunction with the Table Style Options check boxes to format your table.

Once formatted as a table, there are several formatting options on the Table Design tab of the Ribbon. You can choose Header Row, Total Row, Banded Rows, First Column, Last Column, and Banded Columns. — Figure 1295. Choose a color scheme from the gallery.

Additional Details: The gallery shows variations on six color schemes. To use new color schemes, you can choose a new theme from the Page Layout tab of the ribbon.

Additional Details: Creating a table enables many new and powerful features. If those features annoy you, then use the Convert to Range button on the Design ribbon. Excel will convert the data from a table to a regular range, but the formatting will remain.

Problem: I liked the theme colors from Excel 2007 or Excel 2010. Why are they different now?

Strategy: Go the Excel 2013 Page Layout tab. Skip the Themes dropdown. Go to the Colors dropdown and choose Office 2007-2010.

On the Page Layout tab, open the Colors drop-down menu and you can choose Office 2007 - 2010 colors. — Figure 1293. Use this color theme.

This article is an excerpt from Power Excel With MrExcel

Title photo by Mahbod Akhzami on Unsplash