Let's look at formatting numerical data in Excel. In order to do this, we are going to use the number section of the home ribbon.

Excel has provided some predefined items here. For instance, you might want to increase the number of decimals, decrease the number of decimals, apply a thousand separator, or change a number to a percentage.

In the dropdown, Excel provides a number of items that we can very quickly apply. Let's say we want the items in column C to be standard numbers. In the dropdown, we select number, and we can see we now have numbers with two decimal places. Alternatively, I could change them to currency. In this case, we've got pounds. I can then decide to increase or decrease the number of decimals. You can also change how a date is shown. If I select the dates, go back up into the dropdown, I can see there are two standard options for dates. One with the year, month, and day, and another with the month and year. If I want to go into more detail and see more options, I can click on this options arrow. That will open the number dialogue box. I've got more detailed options for date. If I click into number, I can specify the number of decimal places I want, whether I want a thousand separator, I could choose to have negative numbers shown in red, for example.

There are lots of other options for currencies, percentages, and many more.