How to change the default setting for font and size?

G

Guest

I would like to set the default font and size to be Arial with 10 size and
align to the middle whenever I start up Excel. Does anyone have any
suggestion?
Thank you in advance
Eric
 
A

Ardus Petus

Create a Workbook where you format all cells of all worksheets as Arial 10
centered.

Save this workbook as "C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office\XLStart\Book.xlt")

HTH
 
G

Guest

Eric

If you want to change the font and size e.g. Arial and size 10, then follow
the following:

In any excel workbook go to:

Tools>Options

and click the general tab. Here you can set the standard font to Arial and
size 10 which will be applicable to any workbook that you open thereafter.
You will have to close Excel and re-start but the chnage is effective.

As far as I know you cannot use the Tools>Options menu to set the alignment
to 'center'.

There is a way but it is slightly more complicated.

To customise an excel sheet to always open with certain characteristics you
can place a customised excel workbook in the XLStart folder. What this means
is that whenever you start Excel the workbook in the XLstart folder is
launched.

As a step by step guide for you:

(1) Open a new excel workbook and set the font to Arial and size to 10. Also
set the alignment to 'center'.
(2) Select File>Save As...and then set the 'Save In' folder to XLStart. This
is usually found in C/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office10/XLStart.
(3) You can give the workbook a name if you like but using the defualt Book1
is fine.
(4) Click save.

Now each time you launch Excel this default workbook will open.

A few points to note:

(1) Setting font and size is easy. Getting alignment to default to 'center'
is more tricky.
(2) Please be aware that whilst font and size will apply to every sheet in
the workbook the alignment is only applicable to the sheets in which you
apply it. If your default workbook has 5 worksheets and you only applied
'center alignment' to sheet 1 then sheets 2,3,4, and 5 will still have left
alignment.
(3) On a personal level I think there is a time and a place for using
XLStart but I try to avoid it. In your instance I would use Tools>Options to
set Arial and size 10. I would then set the 'center' alignment manually each
time. For completeness the easiest way to do this is to click the top left
square (adjacent to colum A and row 1) which will select the whole sheet and
the just press the 'center' icon. Alternatively CTRL + A selects the whole
sheet and then press 'center'.

Maybe there is an easier way to apply the 'center' default to a whole
workbook but I am not aware of it. Maybe it is just me, but I would avoid
XLStart unless absolutely necesssary.

Any questions, please reply....

Regards


Alex

P.S. I just thought of a programmatic VBA way to get around your issue. If
you are interested then please reply, otherwise to stick to the above.
 
G

Guest

Thank you for your suggestion
This approach only solve the setting when Excel starts up by loading the
specific file, but it does not work when Excel always started, and try to
create a new spreadsheet within Excel. Do you have any more suggestion for
solving this setting problem?
Thank you very much
Eric
 

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