Colours, borders and alignment
7 minutes · 5 steps · free, no sign-up
A sheet full of plain numbers is hard to read. A little styling shows what matters: headings that stand out, totals that are easy to find and long text that does not spill over. You will style a small sales table step by step.
- Add a fill colour to a block of cells
- Change the text colour and make text bold
- Add borders around cells
- Centre text and wrap long text
Click a cell and start typing. Enter edits, Tab moves right, arrows move, Delete clears.
Quick referenceWhere to find them
Fill colour the paint bucket in the toolbar
Text colour the letter A with a coloured bar
Borders the grid-with-lines button
Align left, centre and right buttons
Wrap Format > Wrapping > WrapThe key ideasSummary: Colours, borders and alignment
Styling changes how a sheet looks and never what it means. A yellow cell still holds the same number, and formulas pay no attention to colour. That makes styling safe to add at the end, once the numbers are right.
A few habits go a long way: give the header row a fill and make it bold, put a border or a different fill on totals, centre short headings and right-align numbers, and turn on wrapping for long text instead of widening a column to fit.
Watch out forCommon mistakes
- Using colour as the only message. Some people cannot tell red from green. Say what a colour means in words too, such as a Status column.
- Colouring by hand what a rule could do. If a colour depends on the value (red when overdue), use conditional formatting in the Intermediate level, so it updates itself.
- Too many colours. Two or three used consistently look professional. Six look like confetti.
- Merging cells to centre a heading. Merged cells cause trouble when sorting and filtering. Centre across the cells or just align the text.
Next stepTry it in the real Google Sheets
In Google Sheets the fill colour (paint bucket) and text colour buttons open a full palette, and Format → Conditional formatting colours cells by rule. The Alternating colours option under the Format menu stripes a whole table in one go.