Do you know that you can use excel find – replace dialog to change cell formats?

Often we prepare a report or project plan and our boss or someone else in the team feels that all the red color cells need to change to blue or something similar, worry not, you can use find-replace (ctrl+h) to do this for you.

Press Ctrl+h

click on “Format…” button on “find what:” area and specify the source format

click on “Format…” button on “replace with:” area and specify the target format

Select “replace all” or “replace” depending on your need

Smile, you have just automated a mechanical and boring task

via Change cell formats with find-replace – simple excel trick that can save time | Chandoo.org – Learn Microsoft Excel Online.

Here is a great tip for people who use number formats a lot. Try selecting a cell with a number and typing CTRL+SHIFT+1 .

This shortcut formats my numbers to #,##0.00 which is the most common number format used where I work.

If you are using a UK keyboard typing CTRL+# on a date cell will format the date to dd-mmm-yy.

The US keyboard is CTRL+SHIFT+#