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Participation Project #04 - Excel Formatting

Assignment Files

Submissions

You must submit your completed file(s) through the CS101 Submit Assignments tool.

Due Date

This assignment is due on Thursday, January 30, 2025. For on-campus sections, it is due by the end of class. For online sections, it is due by 11:59:59 PM Eastern Time. Late work will not be accepted.

Grades

This assignment is worth 8 points. A grading rubric is provided at the end of the assignment instructions. Over the entire semester, students must complete at least 20 Participation Projects to earn a maximum of 160 points.

Help & Resources

Video

This video is also available on YouTube [1].

Assignment Notes

Formatting

This project should be pretty simple if you have ever used Word or Powerpoint before, which I'm sure you have. Everything you do in this project will be accessed through the Home ribbon when you open the file. If you're not sure where to find something on the menu bar, if you hover over a button, excel will tell you what the button does. 

Image shows mouse hovering over the Merge & Center button on the Excel Home Ribbon. Dialog box appears stating that the Mrege & Center button combines and centers the contents of the selected cells in a new larger cell.

Formatting using colors

The same thing will happen when you hover over colors in the menus. This is important to know as you will be asked to find specific colors in future projects. This is how you find out what the name of a color is. 

Hovering over a color will tell you the name of the color. The name of the color currently being hovered over is Black, Text 1, Lighter 25% and has good Contrast.

Formatting using the Styles Menu

When you are looking at the cell styles menu, you will see the name of the style displayed as the actually formatting of that style will look. For instance, the style named "Good" has dark green text with a green background for the cell. 

The Cell Styles menu is opened and various style formatting options are shown including good, bad, and neutral options, data and model options, and titles and headings.

Formatting borders

The easiest way to add borders to your projects are to select the borders button, and then select Borders and Shading at the bottom. 

When the Border button is selected, the last option, "borders and shaing" is the best option to use.Format Cells Dialog box when looking at the border tab gives multiple options for changing the borders of a cell including solid and dash lines and multiple angles.

Formatting Menus

You can get a formatting menu to open when selecting the box with the right slanted downward arrow at the bottom of the ribbon. This will open the dialog box for whatever section of the ribbon you selected it from. 

Home ribbon, there is a box with a downward right slanted arrow. This will open the formatting dialog box.

Applying Formatting to multiple cells

To apply formatting to multiple cells, you can click and drag to select multiple cells prior to seleting the formatting, or you may use the cell name box by entering the cell you want to start with, a colon, and then the cell you want to end with before hitting enter.

The Name box is located above the first column and below the clipboard section.

 

Associated Learning Objectives

This assignment covers the following course and unit learning objectives:

Number Learning Objective
C01 Build spreadsheets to perform calculations, display data, conduct analysis, and explore what-if scenarios.
C05 Identify, access, and evaluate information to solve real world problems.
C01.ED02 Create and manage workbooks, worksheets, and their data.
C01.ED03 Format worksheets and cells to create professional reports.
C05.ED01 Locate and access data and resources necessary to solve problems.
C05.ED08 Interpret and analyze spreadsheet data.

References

  1. B. M. Powell, Excel: Formatting Participation Project. West Virginia University, 2021. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbunxGs26rY.