20/05/2026
𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦 𝐂𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐥 (with codes)
Custom Cell Formatting is one of the skills that separates the pros from amateurs in Excel.
It saves you the time and stress of complicated nested formulas and makes your work neat and professional.
Mastering just a few finance format codes can dramatically improve:
· Dashboards
· Reports
· Budgets
· Presentations
· Data readability
· Executive summaries
Ok, let me use a beginner-friendly language.
I simply mean that Custom Cell Formatting in Excel allows you to control how numbers appear without changing the actual value.
It is heavily used by the pro Excel users on dashboards, reports, budgets, payroll sheets, cashflow summaries, and management reports, etc.
With the right Custom Formatting, you can:
1. Replace the boring zeros in numbers with "B" for billion, "M" for million, and "K" for thousand. Saves you the space.
2. You can automatically format negative values in red.
3. Add currency symbols to your numbers
4. Add text (e.g., 18 units, 50 Kg, etc) to numbers
5. Format numbers in percentage or
6. Change the appearance of dates from the default.
See some examples
Number Custom Format
2,223,000 2.223M
911,339 911.339K
5,940,800,000 5.94B
Now, to apply custom formatting, follow these steps;
1. Select the cells containing number values
2. Press Ctrl + 1
3. Click on Number on the headers
4. Select Custom in the Category
5. Enter your format code. Type the codes provided below for Thousands (K)
#, # #0.0,"K"
in the Type: box
6. Click OK
Great! You have moved one step smarter.
Follow me for part 2 of this tutorial.
