Using Excel Formatting

When you use Excel formatting, your formatting selections, including conditional formatting, are applied and retained on the grid when you refresh or perform ad hoc operations.

When you use Excel formatting, Smart View does not reformat cells based on your grid operations, and it does not mark cells as dirty when you change data values. Smart View does preserve the formatting on the worksheet between operations.

Using Excel formatting is generally preferable for highly formatted reports, and you must use Excel formatting for data sources whose application-specific colors are not supported by the Excel color palate.

Excel formatting is used by default, unless you select the Use Cell Styles option in the Formatting tab in the Options panel. See Using Smart View Formatting (Cell Styles) for more information.