Part III: Creating Charts and Other Visualizations
Again, custom number formatting affects only the cosmetic look of the cell. The actual
data in the cell is not affected. Figure 23.3 demonstrates this. The selected cell is format-
ted so that zeros appear as n/a, but if you look at the Formula bar, you can see the actual
unformatted cell contents.
FIGURE 23.3
Custom number formatting that shows zeros as n/a
Applying custom format colors
In addition to controlling the look of your numbers with custom number formatting, you
can also control their color. For instance, to format percentages so that positive percent-
ages appear blue with a + symbol, while negative percentages appear red with a − symbol,
enter this syntax in the Type input box:
[Blue]+0%;[Red]-0%
Notice that all it takes to apply a color is to enter the color name wrapped in square brack-
ets: [ ].
There are only certain colors (the eight Visual Basic colors) you can call out by name, as
shown here. These colors make up the first eight colors of Excel’s legacy palette (the stan-
dard 56 colors that were the default in versions pre-2007).
[Black]
[Blue]
[Cyan]
[Green]
[Magenta]
[Red]
[White]
[Yellow]
