Why is it important to format a worksheet in excel?

Answer 1

It is important in terms of it correctly presenting the data you are showing. Particularly when it comes to numbers, it is important to know what the numbers represent. For example you may want to show a particular currency. You don't want the currency being shown as a different currecncy, or it being shown as an ordinary number.

The amount of decimal places shown is another important thing. For some kinds of things, where the values are always going to be whole numbers, there would be no need to show any decimal places. For other things you may want to show some. 2 decimal places is quite common, but you may want more than that for some values. Often you may want to use scientific notation.

Dates can actually be shown as numbers. Normally you would not want that to happen, so formatting is important there. The way you display dates is important, as you have to remember that different countries have dates displayed differently, often with the day and month swapped around. So if you have a date that is 02/05/09, in some countries it would be regarded as being the 2nd of May 2009, whereas in others it would be regarded as February the 5th 2009. So if it is likely that the data is going to be viewed in different countries, you may want to format the date to show the name of the month in it, which can be done. That will avoid confusion.

So there are lots of reasons for making sure the data in a spreadsheet is formatted correctly. It will make your use of the spreadsheet easier, and it will make it easier for others who see your work to interpret it correctly. That is very important.

Answer 2

Formatting is important to enable accurate sorting...For example if you don't use the date format for a column and you try to sort the rows your option may be limited to alphabetical sorting vs date

Answer 3

There is a wide range of reasons for formatting cells. You want to make it clear what values are, like percentages, or currency for example. If values are not formatted correctly then your spreadsheet will not be clear. You may have many different kinds of data, like time, numbers, percentages, dates etc. They obviously have to be formatted correctly. You may want certain cells to stand out, so you would do things like change the colour of the cell or its text or bold the text or put heavy borders around the cells etc. These are just a few reasons for formatting. There are many others, but you can be certain that formatting cells is very important in Excel, which is why such a wide variety of formatting is available.