MS Excel Home Menu Explained: Basic
Formatting & Editing Tools//How to Use the MS Excel Home Menu (Step-by-Step
Tutorial)
Introduction:
Microsoft Excel is one of the best
Text editors in application software list. You can learn the use of Home Menu
of Ms Excel in detail by reading the article “MS Excel Home Menu Explained: Basic Formatting & Editing Tools”.
The article will acquaint about all command tabs and their command sets under
Home Menu with simple explanation.
Command
Tabs or Menus:
Each menu under menu bar is called
Command Tab. Home menu of menu bar is also a command tab which comprises many
command sets like Clipboard, Font, Alignment, Number, Styles, Cells and
Editing. Let us discuss all command sets and their uses with short cut keys.
Clipboard:
This tab contains cut, copy, paste,
and format painter option. To perform any of these commands, the user must
select the required text at first.
Ø Cut: It is used to remove or delete text from
source; (Ctrl + X).
Ø Copy: It is used to copy selected text but doesn’t
delete text of source; (Ctrl + C)
Ø Paste: It is used to paste copied text at the
location of cursor; (Ctrl + V)
Ø Format
painter: It copies format (designs like colour, size, and type of font) only
and then applies to other type text; (Ctrl + Shift + C/V)
Font:
Font tab is a very crucial command
sets which have commands for font editing like type of font, size of font,
colour of font, background of font etc. The font command set is one of the frequently
used commands of Ms Excel application software. To apply all the commands on
text, user must select the text at beginning.
Ø Font Type: To change font as you require; like Times
New Roman, Book Antique etc. (Ctrl + Shift + P)
Ø Grow Font: To increase the size of font; (Ctrl +
shift + >) / (Ctrl + ])
Ø Shrink Font: To decrease the size of font; (Ctrl +
Shift + <) / (Ctrl + [ )
Ø Font Type: To select predefined size of font like
20, 22, 24 etc.
Ø Font Case: To change case appearance of text like
UPPER Case, lower case, Title Case etc.
Ø Clear
formatting: To clear all format applied selected text.
Ø Bold: To change the typed text into bold. (Ctrl + b)
Ø Italic: To change the typed text into italic design.
(Ctrl + i)
Ø Underline: To place underline below text. (Ctrl + u)
Ø Strikethrough: To draw a horizontally line through
the middle of text.
Ø Subscript: To make a letter smaller in size and
appear below next to a normal text like in H2O, 2 is in subscript
form. (Ctrl +=)
Ø Superscript: To make a letter smaller and appear above
next to a normal letter like in X2. 2 is in superscript form. (Ctrl
+ Shift + +).
Ø Format Cell: There are certain commands to edit each
cell like placing border, alignment and filling colour in cell.
Ø Font colour: To change font colour as you want.
Alignment:
This command set brings us amazing
features like text alignment horizontally and vertically.
Ø Decrease Indent: To decrease the indent level of
paragraph from left margin. It means moving the paragraph far from left toward
right margin.
Ø Increase indent: To increase indent level of
paragraph towards left margin. It means expanding paragraph toward left close
to left margin.
Ø Align Left: To align text to left side. (Ctrl + L)
Ø Align Right: To align text to right side. (Ctrl + R)
Ø Align Centre: To align text at centre of page. (Ctrl
+ E)
Ø Align Justify: To align text to each side of margin
of paper adjusting gaps between Excels. (Ctrl + J)
Ø Align Angular
Basis: To align selected text at any angle.
Numbers:
Under this command set user can
apply fixed types of data to be used for certain cells. The data types can be
number, text, decimal, percentage, currency, fraction, scientific, accounting
and date etc.
Ø General: No specific data applied, it means any type
of can be type in the cell.
Ø Number: It can hold only numbers means digits.
Ø Currency: It can hold only currency type data of
different countries.
Ø Percentage: It allows you to store only percentage
data.
Ø Scientific: It can hold data related to science with
specific unit applied on it.
Ø Text: It can store only text type data.
Ø Fractions: It will store only fraction type data.
Styles:
This command set is full of
different formatting styles to be applied on text or data.
Ø Conditional Formatting: It can change the design of appearance
of data on the basis of condition given to it.
Ø Format Table: It allows you to format table. There are
some predesigned tables that user can apply on data directly.
Ø Cell style: It can help you to give different colour
to cell and font in cell.
Cells:
Under this command set user can
insert and delete cell, row, columns in a document.
Ø Insert: It helps to insert new row or column at a
certain place.
Ø Delete: It allows user to delete particular row or
column.
Ø Format: Under this command there are height increasing
and decreasing option to edit height of cells in a row or width of column.
Ø Rename sheet: You can change the name of sheet using
the command.
Editing:
This command tab contains auto sum,
fill and Clear commands.
Ø AutoSum: It will sum out the given numerical data,
Ø Average: It will find out average of a give series
of data.
Ø Clear: It will remove all applied formats on text.
Ø Sorting and filter: This option will help to arrange
data alphabetically, in ascending or descending order.
Ø Find: This option is to find and replace certain
data like formula and comment etc. from file.
Conclusion:
In the article “MS Excel Home Menu Explained: Basic
Formatting & Editing Tools” we come to know how the home tab is helpful
to us for text editing. If you want to improve your skill, please practice all
shortcut keys mentioned in this article. Thank you.



