🎯 The Goal
I can use formatting tools to make my data clear and professional by changing colors, adding borders, and setting cell types.
📖 The Walkthrough: The Professional Look
A spreadsheet shouldn’t just be black and white. To make your work stand out, you need to use the Toolbar. Here are the “Essential Three” tools:
- Borders: Use the grid icon to add solid lines around your cells. This makes it look like a proper table rather than just floating numbers.
- Fill Color: Use the Paint Bucket to highlight headers (the top row). This helps the reader see exactly what each column represents.
- Cell Types: If a number represents money, don’t just type a “£” or “$”. Use the Format as Currency button (usually a
£or$\symbol). This tells the computer the number is money so it can do math with it later!
📥 The Starter File
Download the “Messy Menu” below. It contains all the data for a cafe, but it looks terrible and is hard to read!
✅ The Checklist: Your Task
Open the “Messy Menu” and follow these steps to fix it:
- The Header: Highlight cells A1 to C1. Make the text Bold, change the Fill Color to dark blue, and change the Text Color to white.
- Borders: Highlight all the data from A1 down to C10. Click the Borders icon and select “All Borders.”
- Money Matters: Highlight the “Price” column. Click the Currency button so all the numbers show the
£or$symbol. - Alignment: Highlight the whole table and click Center Align so the text sits neatly in the middle of the boxes.
🏆 Level Up! (Extension)
- Merge & Center: Can you create a title in Row 1 that stretches across all three columns? Highlight A1 to C1 and look for the Merge Cells button.
- Conditional Formatting: Can you make any price over £5.00 automatically turn Red? (Look under the ‘Format’ menu for this secret power!)
📤 Test Your Knowledge
Once you have completed the tasks click the button below to take the quiz for this skill. Remember to select Skill 2 in the first question !
🏁 Navigation
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