How to Change the Color of a Cell

In the previous lesson, you saw how to change the font and font size in Excel. In this lesson, we'll look at how to change the color of a cell.

Change the Background Color of a Cell

To change the background color of cells, you first have to highlight the ones you want to alter. We'll start with the cells A2 to A5. So highlight these cells on your spreadsheet.

• With the cells A2 to A5 highlighted, locate the Font panel on the Ribbon at the top of the Excel

• Locate the Paint Bucket, and click the arrow just to the right of it. You'll see some colors appear:

Move your mouse over any of the colors and the cells will change automatically. You can then see what the new color looks like. Click with the left mouse button to set the color you want. If you don't like any of the colors displayed, click on "More Colors".

Once you have the number cells formatted in a different color, click on the cell A1. Now do exactly the same thing, only this time choose a contrasting color for the background of this cell. Your spreadsheet should then look something like the one below.
 

Change the Text color

To change the color of the text itself, click the down arrow just to the right of the letter A, which is just to the right of the Paint Bucket on the Font panel.

Select a color just like you did for the background color of the cell. Here's what your spreadsheet might look like with the background cell color changes, and the text color:

So with just a few click of your mouse, you can create a quite attractive spreadsheet. In the next part, you'll see how to save your work in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010.