Hello all
Chandoo has graciously, some may say stupidly, given me access to post on Chandoo.org.
I have been a reader of Chandoo.org for about 2 years and have spent most of my time contributing to the Forums where I have just posted my 950th post.
I have written a few small posts which Chandoo has used, and I wrote a major post on Monte Carlo Simulation and Data Tables:
http://chandoo.org/wp/2010/05/06/data-tables-monte-carlo-simulations-in-excel-a-comprehensive-guide/
Which was well recieved.
I will be starting to post about once per week and will be introducing a series of real life problems and how they can be tackled using Excel.
Hiding Error Messages
I like to leave certain error messages in place because they can show you what your data is doing, but they look horrible when you print out reports.
One way around this is to use functions like =Iserr or =Iserror to trap the error and display something else
Eg: A formula =A1/A2 will divide A1 by A2 and give you an answer,
but if A2 is 0 you will get a Divide Zero Error #DIV/0!
To fix that you can use the =IFERROR Function =IFERROR(A1/A2,0) which will now give you a zero if A2 is zero
But if you don’t mind seeing, or want to see, the errors on screen, but don’t want to print them out you can have Excel hide the error messages at Print time.
How:
Goto the Page Setup menu
On the Sheet Tab use the Cell errors as:
and select <Blank>, “–“ or #N/A as appropriate
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!