how to make your accounts look good in excel that's right this tutorial
will show you how to make your accounts look pretty i'm simon this is computer tutoring
so if you are really wanting to know how to make your account easy to read in excel the best thing
you can do is follow along by downloading this file i'll give you the link down below
up above so you can follow along and get the most out of this excel tutorial okay so what you'll
need to know first is how to insert a row in excel so just going to right click on row one just here
gonna go down to and click on insert here and you have a new row inserted in your excel spreadsheet
next you'll need to know how do i merge cells in excel so we're going to merge these top five cells
across the first row by highlighting them and then i want you to click on this button here that says
merge and center so click on merge and center and now these cells are merged so what are the
benefits of that well i can now type in the title to my account spreadsheet which is easy
to read accounts i type easy to read accounts press enter that's great so now we need to add
so now we need to add colors to our account spreadsheet how do we do that well we're going
to go up and click on the cell that we want to change the background color so this is changing
the background of a cell in excel and then we're going to go to this formatting drop down list just
here it's a little paint bucket just to the right and then we're going to go down to and choose
standard colors now we've got 10 standard colors that we can choose from if we wanted to and
as you can see as i'm hovering over these colors here the colors are already changing on the cell
but say you want to make sure your colors are right or how to know how how to know or how
to make sure your colors are writing excel we're going to click on more colors here at the bottom
now it brings up the colors dialog box inside the colors dialog box you'll see a lot of these
hexagonal colors and if you feel that the one here is correct you can click on it but what i
would suggest is going to click on custom and there we can mix the exact color that we want
notice here we have red green and blue values there so you can go to your marketing department
and find out the exact exact red green and blue values that they use
for your corporate or for the for company branding let's say for instance here i'm going to type in
155 for red press tab 50 for green oops make sure that i'm typing right so 50 for green and 12 for
blue comes up as a horrible brownish color i tell you what i'm just going to make that a
little brighter there we go that's good and then click on ok and then your background color changes
to whatever you've selected and you're sure that that color is right for your corporate identity
now say for instance you now want to change changing the colors of multiple cells in excel
um so in in in effect creating column headers in excel we can highlight these multiple cells
here from a5 across to e5 and then i can click on that same paint bucket here now it remembers
the last color i've selected so i can click on that and then these colors are changed there
or if i click on this drop down list here under recent colors just down here it will remember
the last 10 most recent colors that i've used in excel next you'll need to know how to change the
font in a spreadsheet so what you do is click on the cell that you want to change the font off so
we're going to click on easy to read accounts and then going to click on this font drop down
menu as you can see here at the top we're going to click on this arrow just there i'm just going to
zoom in so you can see and click and then you can choose whatever font that you're wanting
i can as i scroll down i can see as i'm hovering over each font
that the excel spreadsheet is changing let's just zoom back to give you an eye so you can
see the excel spreadsheet updates to show this font that i've selected now just be aware that
you can type in the font that you're wanting so say i'm looking for tahoma i can type tahoe and
you see tahoma has come up available here at the top there and now all i need to do is press enter
and the font now is tahoma okay so how do we change the font of lots of cells in excel
then we can highlight from a5 click and hold your mouse button down move across to e5
let go and now we can click in the font drop-down list here at the top type in tahoma press enter
and you can see the font is updated great so now we need to change the font size in excel
how do we do that well again we click on the cell that we wish to change so in this case a1
then i'm going to click on this drop down menu just to the right of the font style or the font
type menu and that's the font size menu you can then choose whatever size you want just a little
tip here say i'm looking for a particular size i'm looking for something between 18 and 20 but you
can see in this drop down list i only have 18 or 20. what i can do is if i'm looking for say 19.5
at the top here i can type 19.5 and then my font size will be exactly the size i need
okay so how do i adjust the font size of multiple cells in excel so firstly i make sure that the
cells i want to adjust are selected so in this case a5 through to e5 i can then use these buttons
here to increase or decrease the font size so again this goes up by increments depending on
the list here so if i'm looking for something in particular i just decrease it say i'm looking for
13 then i need to go up to this here and type in 13. so now as you can see some of my text in
the columns is spilling over into another column i see here the running total the a and the l is now
spilt over into column f so i could individually go and double-click on this dividing lines between
each column to adjust the width but that's going to take a long time so you want to know how to
adjust the width of multiple columns in excel this is how you do it you select the columns
that you want to adjust the width of and then you can double click any dividing line between the
columns and the columns will automatically adjust their width to accommodate the text within them
great looking good so now you might want to know about adding borders to an accounts spreadsheet
so you can do that by the borders button just at the top now the quickest way to add borders
is by clicking on this drop down menu here and choosing the button here at the bottom that says
draw border so i'm going to click on draw border and if i zoom in close you can see that my mouse
cursor has turned into a little pencil and i can use that to draw the border so say friends i want
to border down here i can click and drag here and so now i've got a border between the data and the
column headers now you may have noticed that your spreadsheet is made up of these grid lines
and they can interfere a little bit with the borders it can make it hard for you to know where
you've drawn your border so we're going to remove them and we're going to do this by
going up to view here at the top and then taking the tick out of grid lines just here
if i move back you can see the grid lines have disappeared and in fact because i've got the draw
border pencil selected i've got these little dots here to help me draw any future borders
so as i said the quickest way to add borders to a spreadsheet is by using the draw borders button
on the home tab and you can go down here and choose draw border
now let's say for instance we'd want to increase or change the thickness of grid lines drawn on
a spreadsheet so i can go down to and click on line or hover over line style i'm going to
go all the way down to the bottom and choose the thickest line style you can see here at the bottom
and now i'm going to draw another border across here and you can see that that border is border
is considerably thicker great so now you know how to change the thickness of grid lines drawn
on a spreadsheet so let's see if we can make this a little prettier i'm going to just click on this
draw border button here at the top and just draw a border here at the top now say for instance i want
a literal grid beneath to hold where my data is so what i can do is go up to this drop down list
here go down to and choose draw border grid i can now start up in the top left hand corner and drag
down and as you can see i can draw a border grid when i get down to the bottom just make sure there
we go i align it up and when i think my border is correct correctly surrounding the data that
i want it to i can let go of the mouse i'm just going to scroll up to the top to get to the top
of the spreadsheet there great so notice that uh my border is a little thick yeah so i just want to
thin them out a little bit so how am i going to do that well again what i'm going to do is just
make sure if i click on this drop down list here make sure my line style is thin okay so now i'm
going to go back and select all the cells that i want to put borders around so it should be down to
row 119 there we go excellent and then i'm going to go to this drop down list here again and i'm
going to choose all borders so you see all borders there and as you can see i just click
away that my borders on my grid lines are now thin makes it look more excel like doesn't it
so again as i can see the bottom border i want to be thick so i'm just going to click on this drop
down list here and just make sure my line style is thick and then i'm just going to go down to this
drop down list here and i'm going to choose draw border and draw a border here across the bottom
if you make a mistake if you draw on a border say i went up here and i didn't want to have
this border you can do one of two things one use the erase border button so if i click on this
drop down the border drop down list here and go down to and choose erase border i can then draw
across the border that i want to remove so that's the first thing i can do the second thing i can
do is use the undo button so knowing how to use undo in excel is of vital importance how do you
do it well you can use firstly the undo button which is at the top just here and every time
you click on it it will undo uh each step so if i click on it and as i'm un clicking on the undo
button each time it's going through each step that i've under done there we go oh i've gone too far
so the question is what if you undo too far in excel what do you do well you can use
redo in excel so that's what you should be using redo in excel so the way you
you do that is by clicking on the redo button here at the top so every time i redo it redoes what
i've just undone once you've finished using the draw border or the erase border button in excel
you'll need to turn it off now you do that by clicking once on the bot the
button oops there let me just zoom in here so you can see so you click once on this button
like so and you can see that that button is turned off and if i zoom out again you can see that
little dots have all disappeared if i click on the erase button you can see these little dots here
appear to show that we're in drawing mode or draw border mode in excel so just one more click here
and that gets rid of that and we're ready we're back to normal excel so i think you will agree
your spreadsheet is starting to look pretty good so there is another problem and to illustrate that
i'm going to imagine entering in another item so as i move down my spreadsheet like so i get to the
bottom and this is the 17th of december let's type in the 18th of december here 2020. now i
i sometimes i could guess that this column is the description of what i'm doing so i'm going to type
in pruning but oh i can't remember what column represents expenses and what column represents
receipts or money received so what i would like to do is know how to fix the top rows
in a spreadsheet and this is how you do it so we're going to scroll up to the top
and it's known as freezing rows so this process is known as freezing rose in excel
click on cell a6 and the reason we're clicking on cell a6 is because when we freeze rows in excel
it will freeze everything above the row that we've currently got selected
okay so we make sure we've got cell a6 here selected and then we're going to click on the
view tab here at the top and then go across and click on freeze panes and we're gonna go down
to and click on freeze panes so now when we come to enter our new and scroll down to enter our new
item our new job basically i can see it's pruning and i can easily see
my expense and my received column so i received 40 pounds for pruning there we go sometimes though
when you open a spreadsheet that somebody else has created that your rows or your columns are
already frozen so the question is how to stop rose being stuck at the top in excel so how do you do
it how do you stop rows being stuck at the top in excel well you would go to view you would go to
freeze panes and wherever you happen to be on the spreadsheet you would click on unfreeze panes and
your spreadsheet is back to normal a question i often get asked is how to create alternative
row colors in excel well creating alternative row colors in excel is possible by using
format painter let me uh show you where that is so on the home tab here the format painter is
a little paint brush looking icon just here and using format painter excel makes things
creating these alternative colors very easy the way you do this is we're going to select a7 across
to e7 and change the background color of those cells to a light gray just here and then going
to select the pattern so in this case i'm going to select cell a6 across and down to e7 so one
right white row and one grey row and i'm now going to click on the format painter button if you look
carefully you can see a dotted line that surrounds my selection now i will select all of the cells i
want to apply the gray and white row formatting to so if i scroll all the way down to the bottom
and when i let go and just click away to show i can see that now i have created alternative
row colors in excel by using the format painter hopefully this goes a little way to answering
how i should use the format painter in excel and it's just one of many
examples of how to use format painter well that's it i hope for all of you that were following along
it's worked for you now our next tutorial we will be looking at percentages that's right working out
like teaching you how to work out how much vat discounts and also the percentage of expenses
so if you haven't already done so make sure you click on the subscribe button and the
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accounts tutorial make sure you give us a thumbs up thank you so much for watching