how to add a legend in a footer?

[kyla]

I have an excel spreedsheet with is showing a project plan timeline and I
would like to add a legend in the footer. I would like to have a red square
and beside that the definition, orange square-definition and
yellow-defintion......

 

[OssieMac]

Hi Kyla,

Open Footer and place cursor in required position (left, centre or right
footer.)
Select Font button and set font type to Wingdings. At same time set required
color for the symbol and close font dialog box.
Hold Alt key down and type 0110 on the keypad at right of keyboard.
(Displays solid rectangle)
Move cursor off the character and reset font to required character set for
normal characters and also re-set font to required color for normal
characters.

You can experiment on a worksheet to get your character of choice from the
wingdings symbols.

Select a Cell and set font to wingdings.

Select and insert the character of choice.

Assuming that your character is in cell A1
In an adjacent cell enter =CODE(A1).
This will give you the code to use with the Alt key.

 

[kyla]

Great!! That was very useful....it worked..buuut...lol...I typed in the
"definition" of each colored squared and when I tried to click out of the
footer, a box came up saying "The HEader or Footer cannot be longer than 255
characters including formatting tokens and other special characters. Delete
some text or make the formatting less complex". I figured it out that I am
23 characters over....this is so silly....anyway, another question; if there
a way to change the allignment, right now it is centered, I would prefer if
it was to the left.
Thanks again, greatly appreciated

 

[OssieMac]

Hi Kyla,

When you open the Custom Footer in Page setup, did you use the Left section
box that is left justified?

 

[OssieMac]

PS Kyla,

If you are using the left section but it is centering the footer on the
page, your printer might be seeing the special character code as a control
character. To test for this, delete the character and see if the remainder of
the footer is left justified. If it is, then try searching for an alternative
Windings character as per my previous post and see if it works better.

 

[kyla]

No, I was using the Center section, but I don't understand why the alingment
feature would not be available. Regardless, we opted to put the legend in
the Left section box and short formed a few of the words so we were under the
255 characters.

Thanks so much for your help!