Custom formatting gallery?

L

lokki

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

In Office 2007 (Win), you can open up a formatting ribbon (under styles) that gives you access to cell formats by name - this controls color of the cell background, text color, border, font, etc. This is amazingly useful for all the reasons you'd expect when dealing with visual displays.

While I can find tools to change these elements individually, I've gotten used to being able to simply apply these styles with a single click. As I understand things, Styles like this are not available directly in Mac Office 2008.

Being just a little bit color blind, trying to choose the same shade every time from a set of small chips is very difficult and time consuming.

Does anyone have an idea about workarounds for this kind of functionality? What I'm looking to do is define styles that can be applied by selection from a panel, if possible. Also, being able to name them would be awesome, if that name can be called from the Conditional Formatting panel during calculations.

Thanks for any insight!

-Scott
 
C

CyberTaz

Hi Scott;

Office 2008 doesn't have quite the same fluff that's been stuffed into the
Windows version :) but what you're fundamentally asking about is something
that has been around for a long time: a Style. You can create a Style in
either of two ways;

1- Select a cell & format it the way you want,. While the cell is selected
go to Format> Style, type a name for the Style, then press return, or

2- Go directly to Format> Style, type the name, then click the Modify button
& choose the attributes you want to include.

For convenience, you can also add a Style list box to a toolbar.

Excel 2008 Help isn't of much use but you can use the Help on Styles for
Excel 2003 -- everything is virtually identical:


<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP051995411033.aspx?pid=CH010036921
033>
<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA011101991033.aspx?pid=CH011180111
033>

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac
 
L

lokki

Thanks for that! I had discovered the styles, but didn't know about the toolbar combo box. I didn't see that in the help files, so I did some experimenting... all I ended up with was a custom toolbar with a Style button that opens another dialog box, from which I can choose the style. Blech.

Is there any way to go from there to having individual styles as buttons? Or even having the button itself actually be a custom list of styles? What would be really über-cool is to have the custom styles be attached only to the worksheet, *and* have distinct buttons for each of the custom styles.

Mmmmm... custom styles.... :)

-Scott
 
C

CyberTaz

Hey Scott;

You evidently put the wrong control on the toolbar :) You used the Style...
tool which just opens the Style dialog -- the one you want is directly
beneath that one & displays as Style:[followed by a combo box]. You can drag
it to a new toolbar or add it to an existing bar.

As for the other button ideas, not without VBA. If 2008 supported VBA you
could create a macro to apply each Style & assign each macro to a custom
button. It may be possible to do something similar with Apple Script, but
that's out of my realm.

Styles aren't *sheet* specific but they are *workbook* specific. If you want
Styles from one book available in another use the Merge button in the Style
dialog to import from other books. You can also create a Workbook template
file containing your Styles so that each book generated from the template
would have the Styles available... Or save all your Styles in one specific
file & import as needed to other books.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac
 

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