Over the last few years, there has been much debate about the merits and perils of Microsoft Ribbon UI in Excel 2007. Personally I think ribbon is a good way to explore an application. I have gotten used to it since I tested excel 2007 for first time. Now, during the rare occasions I work on excel 2003, I feel strange navigating through a bunch of menus to do even the simplest things (like aligning cell content vertically).
As more and more people are migrating to excel 2007 (and eventually to excel 2010) it is very important to master the ribbon UI to be productive with spreadsheets.
So to make you an excel guru, I am releasing a free learning guide to excel 2007 ribbon interface.
The learning guide has 10 pages. It explains 7 ribbons and has 3 more pages of ribbon tips. The ribbon tabs explained are,
- Home ribbon tab
- Insert ribbon tab
- Page Layout ribbon tab
- Formulas ribbon tab
- Data ribbon tab
- View ribbon tab
- Review ribbon tab
See the sample page for insert tab (click on it to see at higher resolution)
Download the free Excel 2007 learning guide now
Click here to download the Using Excel 2007 Ribbon – Learning Guide.
What is the catch?
There is no catch, except that, I am in a generous and becoming-a-daddy mood.
But if you must catch, just go ahead and sign-up for our e-mail news letter. It is free, awesome and packed with super-cool tips. And as if there is not enough free, you will also get a 25 page free e-book on using excel when you sign-up. It has 95 really fun and productive excel & charting tips.
Go…
17 Responses to “Custom Number Formats – Colors”
You are right, Chandoo. I was playing with the colour numbers last week and some of them don't appear different from each other. Others are totally different from yours.
@Duncan
Each version of Excel, post 2003, renders colors slightly differently
Different language versions may also have different default color palettes
Hello in french
excel 2010
colo1 = couleur1 = black
[couleur1]; [couleur2]; etc..
@Hui, thank you very much again for this great post.
However - under Excel 2007, Hungarian version your solution does not work with color names. I've tried both English and Hungarian names, but drops an error message "not valid formats"
Do you have any idea how to solve this issue?
thanks in advance
@Andras
Without a Hungarian version of Excel 2003 I don't think I can assist
Have you tried using the colour numbers? I couldn't get the names to work (despite using an english version of excel). but it did work with the numbers though. I left out the "u" and was easily able to produce burgundy using [color9]
Here a possible solution: find an English version of Excel, write there the formats using English names, then open the file in the Hungarian version and see the translation.
In Excel 2007 I can't get the colour names to work e.g Sea Green but the numbers do e.g color3 - colour3 does not work so I must bow to the country that has stolen my language (ha ha!)
Hey chandoo, nice Tip!
Wouldn't be easier just apply some conditional formatting for negative numbers and another for positive numbers? Or there's some cases that you can't do that?
Unfortunately the TEXT function doesn't color the cell as number formatting does.
Hi Hui,
Great post Sir, love the new way of formatting with color numbers.
I am using 2007, and it leads me to the last color number 56.
Thanks Hui.
[…] explains how to set up custom number formats with a wide array of […]
Thanks Hui - works a treat!
Thank you, very helpful.
Trying to figure out if it is possible to apply color only to a part of the cell?
E.g. I have a value formatted as Accounting with a currency symbol.
Those I find somewhat distracting though necessary. If I could make them less obtrusive by coloring them gray while the number would stay black, that would be great. Tried tinkering with the format string, but didn't get the desired result. Single color for complete cell value works, but coloring just part of it could not be achieved. Maybe somebody managed that?
Exactly what I was looking for - thank you!
colour in the Australian doesn't work - we have to go American and no problem.
I always thought is was 56 colours notice you have 57. Cool.
thanks
Analir Pisani
Customised Microsoft Office Training Specialist
Sydney - Australia
http://www.azsolutions.com.au
Thank You!