Part III: Creating Charts and Other Visualizations
Special Contains additional number formats. The list varies, depending on the locale you
choose. For the English (United States) locale, the formatting options are Zip Code, Zip Code +4,
Phone Number, and Social Security Number.
Custom Define custom number formats not included in any of the other categories.
Getting fancy with custom number formatting
You may not know it, but when you apply number formatting, you are actually giving Excel
instructions using a number format string. A number format string is a code that tells Excel
how you want the values a given range to appear cosmetically.
To see this code, follow these steps to apply basic number formatting:
- Right-click a range of cells, and select Format Cells. The Format Cells dialog box
appears.
- Open the Number tab; then choose the Number category, select the Use 1000
Separator check box, 0 decimal places, and enclose negative numbers in
parentheses.
- Click the Custom category as shown in Figure 23.1. Excel takes you to a screen
that exposes the syntax that makes up the format you selected.
FIGURE 23.1
The Type input box allows you to customize the syntax for the number format.
