Settings for Excel digital display format

Numbers, dates, and times, within the worksheet, are stored as pure digits. When you want to appear in a cell, it appears in the format specified by that cell. If a cell is not used, the cell uses a common format that displays the numeric value with maximum precision. When the number is large, it is expressed in scientific notation, for example: 5.82E 10. If the width of the cell is too small to display the number in the specified format, the cell will fill with a # number, and the number will be displayed as long as the width of the cell is widened.

6.9.1 Change the number format

By default, when you type a value, Excel looks at the value and formats the cell appropriately, for example: When you type $2000, Excel formats the $2,000, and when you type 1/3, Excel displays January 3, and when you type 25%, Excel would consider it to be 0.25 and show 25%. Excel thinks the appropriate format is not necessarily the correct format, for example: after a cell type date, if you save the number, Excel will indicate the number as a date. We can format cells using commands or tools, and the steps are as follows:

(1) Select the cell or range you want to format, and choose Format Cell on the Format menu. The Format Cells dialog box appears on the screen, and the Value tab is selected, as shown in Figure 6-28.

(2) In the Category list, select the type of format you want, and then press the OK button.

### #的意义

If we enter a number that is too long to be displayed in a cell, after formatting, we see a series of "#" symbols displayed in the cell. When you change the width of the cell so that it is the same width as the data or slightly larger, the display of the number is restored. Figure 6-29 shows the changes in the unit before and after adjusting the width.

6.9.2 using formatting Tools

Excel has a list of formatting tools that you can use to format numbers. As shown in Figure 6-29. Using the formatting tool we can easily format the selected cells. The procedure is to first select the area you want to format, and then press the graphic button that represents the corresponding format. For the selected range, you can use several formats at the same time.

Use of 6.9.3 colors

For numbers, you can specify a color, for example: a positive number is shown in black and the negative numbers are expressed in red. In the Number dialog box, select Value First, then choose a format in the negative numbers list, as shown in Figure 6-30, and finally press the OK button to complete the setting.

This way, when we enter the number "-1234567" in the cell, we see that the number is displayed in red.