Zebra lines, highlighting applied to alternative rows is a very good way to make tables readable & pretty.
We can use either conditional formatting or table formats to quickly add zebra lines to our data.
But what if you want a little more?
What if you want to highlight, lets say 3 rows in one color and 3 in another and repeat this …
Of course, we can use conditional formatting and come-up with some clever mix of ROW & MOD. But why waste so much of creative sauce on something as trivial as zebra line? So here is a quick alternative.
Use Table styles and tell excel how you want to highlight the lines.
Steps to create custom zebra lines
- First convert your data to table, if you have not already done it.
- Now, go to Table Design ribbon and right click on the table style you want and choose duplicate
- Excel creates a duplicate table style and opens a box to edit it.
- Give it a friendly name like myTableStyle1 or zebra-v1
- Select “First Row Stripe” and set stripe size to 2 or 3 as you want.
- Repeat the step for “Second Row Stripe” as well.
- Click OK & save your style.
- And now, apply this style to your table by selecting it from Table styles gallery.
- Your custom zebra is ready to bray and jump around.
Bonus tip #1: You can have 2 different stripe sizes too
For example you can have 5 rows for first stripe and 2 for second stripe, thus highlighting weekends in a different color.
Bonus tip #2: You can apply the same to columns too
You can apply the same concept to column stripes (banded columns) and set their sizes using table styles.
Bonus tip #3: Turn on / off zebra lines with a click
If you ever feel tired looking at all the stripes, you can quickly turn them off /on from Design Ribbon > Banded Rows
Homework: Change color when value changes
When you have few values with some duplicates, it makes sense to apply a band color whenever there is a change in value. How to set up zebra lines then? See here for your homework.
[Related: Zebras & Checker boards using Excel]
Do you use custom table styles?
Custom table styles are an easy way to tell Excel how we want our data to look. I use them often when designing a report or spreadsheet model.
What about you? Do you use custom styles? Have you tried the stripe size feature? What is your experience like? Please share using comments.
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!