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◆ Formatting · drill · Excel Keyboard Fluency track

The decimals pass

decimals are a column property — one ragged cell breaks the read.
The comps page goes into the committee deck this afternoon and the number formats are a jumble: dollars carrying cents, the multiple showing no decimal at all, the margin running three places, and somewhere in the table one cell that somebody hand-formatted so it reads longer than everything around it. Work the page to the house standard — dollars at zero decimals, multiples and margins at one — set the Median row apart the way a read line should be, and save it down.
train this drill → par 25s · optimal 23 keys · keyboard only · free
The shortcuts in this drill
Alt walks: tap Alt, release, then the letters in sequence — each key steps one ribbon menu. On a Mac, tap and use the same letters (KeyTips, Excel 2024+).
Alt h 9⌥ h 9 on macRemove a decimal place
Strip decimals — share counts and headcounts don’t want cents.
Alt h 0⌥ h 0 on macAdd a decimal place
Add decimals until the figure carries the precision the page needs.
Ctrl+1⌘1 on macOpen the Format Cells dialog
The master formatting dialog — number formats, alignment, borders in one place when a ribbon walk would take longer.
Ctrl+B⌘B on macBold
Bold marks structure: titles, total rows, anything the reviewer’s eye should land on first.
Alt h b p⌥ h b p on macTop border
Top border above a total row — the accounting ruling that says “this line sums the ones above.”
Ctrl+S⌘S on macSave
The optimal line
the par-setting sequence, straight through:
B5:D13 alt h 9 ×2 → whole dollars · E5:E13 alt h 0 → one place · F5:F13 alt h 9 ×2 → one place · the ragged cell ctrl+1 · Median row ctrl+b + alt h b p · ctrl+s
More Formatting drills
Typeset the memo
Bold the header, unbold the imposter, italicize the memos, flag the discontinued line in r
Set the alignment
Center, left, right — and a long title centered across the table, never merged
Fix the squeezed columns
A print page nobody can read — fit the labels to their content, hold the quarter block to
Rule off the schedule
Accounting rulings: line under headers, line above every total, outline the headline
← Typeset Center → all 74 drills
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