Instead of writing another long Excel function tutorial, I wanted to dedicate a quick post on how to make your Excel models look 100x better. No matter what version of Excel you’re using, there are three easy things you can do to make your tables and models easier on the eyes, easier to use, and more professional. I’ll show you the transformation alongside an example.

First, let’s suppose this simple table is what we originally start with:

Step 1: Change the font to “Gill Sans MT”. This is the font recommended by Edward Tufte, an expert on the visual display of data. In Excel 2007, the default font is something called “Calibri”, which is also an improvement over the default “Arial” that came in previous versions of Excel. Here’s what that simple change does to our table:

Step 2: Don’t use extra decimals where not needed, and consider changing 0s to “-” for readability. To do this, simply select the numerical data you want to format, click on the “,” icon on the menu bar, and then click on the icon that decreases decimals (it looks something like “.00 -> 0”). Just doing that makes things much more readible:

Finally, step 3: Turn off the gridlines. To do this in Excel 2003, go to Tools >> Options >> General and make sure the box by “Gridlines” is unchecked. Our table now looks like this:

And voila. How much better does that look? Of course, there’s plenty of additional stuff you can do (put in lines to separate totals, put in dollar signs in some areas), but these three steps can always be done on any Excel model. Give it a whirl sometime.

***************************************************

Look Good at Work and Become Indispensable Become an Excel Pro and Impress Your Boss

***************************************************

Posted on 07 May 2009 by Leslie Currently, Comments and Pings are both off.

17 Feedbacks on "How to make your Excel models look more professional – 3 quick tips"

Chris Neuhaus

Those are the dumbest tips I have ever heard. Thanks for wasting my time with this dribble.

26 May 2009 at 11:45

Leslie

I believe you meant “drivel” and not “dribble”. Critiques are more credible when written correctly :P

26 May 2009 at 13:18

Trade Stock in UK

I beg to differ on the last advice… but only partually.
I do a lot of stock market analysis in excel and I agree that ticking gridlikes off is a good idea. But now imagine you have a table say 50×10 it would be difficult to read the data… instead, try to use the borders but use dotted lines and light grey and do headers in bold with a bit bigger font and say dark blue background (white font though) and you’ll see the huge difference.
I had to present my stock market information to some brokers and they loved it.

09 June 2009 at 13:06

Frank Fowler

love the down to earth approach in explaining things. so many Excel web sites presume one knows a lot re Excel not to mention that many users are not native English speakers. would love to see some articles on macros here.
cheers Frank

05 August 2009 at 17:54

J

Is it possible to set it up so that it always display zero decimal when you click on the ” , ” function?

30 May 2013 at 3:13

hosting reviews

An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a colleague
who has been doing a little homework on this. And he actually bought me
dinner simply because I found it for him… lol. So allow me
to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending some time to talk about this issue here on
your web page.

08 August 2013 at 12:40

nasal polyp removal

Thanks for finally writing about >How to make your
Excel models look more professional – 3 quick tips | Experiments
in Finance <Loved it!

20 December 2013 at 21:13

how to make legit money online

Every weekend i used to pay a visit this site, as i want enjoyment, since this this web site conations
genuinely nice funny data too.

28 December 2013 at 10:05

Prince

It’s not my first time to visit this web page, i am browsing this web page
dailly and take nice data from here every day.

05 March 2014 at 23:28

Andre

If some one wishes to be updated with hottest technologies then he must be
pay a quick visit this web page and be up to date everyday.

10 June 2014 at 7:32

August

Hi there, I read your new stuff like every week. Your writing style is awesome, keep up the
good work!

14 June 2014 at 0:26

Facebook Hack Download

Whoa! This blog looks exactly like my old one! It’s on a completely different subject but it has pretty much the
same layout and design. Wonderful choice of colors!

19 June 2014 at 4:14

marketing coaches

It’s awesome for me to have a website, which is beneficial
for my know-how. thanks admin

03 August 2014 at 1:12

injustice god among us

Hi my friend! I want to say that this article
is awesome, nice written and come with almost all important infos.
I’d like to see more posts like this .

16 August 2014 at 5:08