professional looking financial spreadsheets

[mattflow]

I have created quite a few financial spreadsheets that work wonderfully.
However, even though they are more flexible and accurate than the
previous versions, i get negative comments about it's appearance. Does
any one have any links to screenshots, pdfs, or excel files that have
professional looking formats. I am trying to gather a few ideas, and as
you can probably tell i am not very artistic.

 

[Daniel CHEN]

Some general guide:
1) use standard Windows-style dialogs and dropdown menu system.
2) use different color/font/size/bold for table row/column headings.
3) format of input cells, output cells different from those descriptive
cells.

--
Best regards,
---
Yongjun CHEN
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[Guest]

Here are some additional ideas:

Visit the Microsoft template site and look at the Excel templates for ideas.
They have a lot of examples that should give you ideas.

Change the fill color of all the cells to white (this gets rid of the grid
lines). Then you can change a color of an individual cell to highlight it
and add lines that will stand out more. For example, you can put a border
around an entire cell like a total to make it stand out.

Use different colors than the same standard ones. You'll actually need to
go to Tools>Options and the Color tab to add them.

Increase your row height and your fonts from the default.

And one thing I like to do is fill a row with a color like teal and then
bring the row height down to something like 3 or 4. This makes a great
dividing line for sections.

Make sure everything is consistently formatted.