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Formatting cells

Make your sheet easier to read with bold, colors, money and dates.

Bold, italic, size and text color

All formatting works the same way: first select the cells you want to change, then pick what to do in the toolbar. You can select one cell, a group of cells, or a whole row or column.

For text, click the T button in the toolbar (Text style), right after the magnifying glass. The menu that opens lets you:

  • pick a color for the letters;
  • pick a size: Small, Normal or Large;
  • make the text bold or italic. Each button is shown in the style it applies, so you can see right away what it does.

From the keyboard, Ctrl+ B makes text bold and Ctrl+ I makes it italic.

Tip

Text color changes the letters. To color the background of the box, use the paintbrush instead (see the next section).

Color a cell

To color the background of some cells, select them, click the paintbrush in the toolbar and pick a color: yellow, red, orange, green, blue or purple. To remove the color, choose None in the same menu.

Colors help you spot things at a glance: green for done, red for urgent, or yellow for a number that matters.

Tip

To color a whole row or column, click its number or letter to select it, then pick the color.

Show numbers as money, percentages or dates

You can choose how a number looks without changing the number itself. Select the cells, click the # button in the toolbar and choose:

  • Number: adds commas between the thousands (1,234).
  • Currency: adds the dollar sign, the commas and always two decimals, like money ($1,234.00). Type $12.50 and the cell switches to Currency on its own, and a total of currency cells shows as currency too.
  • Percent: shows 0.15 as 15.00%. So type 0.15 to get 15%.
  • Date: pick how the date reads, like 2026/03/31 (the Canadian standard), 2026-03-31, 31/03/2026, 03/31/2026 or Mar 31, 2026.

To go back to the plain look, choose None at the top of the same menu.

Right next to the #, two buttons add or remove a decimal place (More decimal places and Fewer decimal places). For example, 55.79 becomes 55.8, then 56.

Note

Changing the decimals only changes what you see: the full number is kept for calculations. Currency always shows a dollar sign; for another currency, use Number with two decimals. For a date to be recognized, type it as 2026/03/31, 2026-03-31 or 31/03/2026.

Line text up left, center or right

To start with, text sits on the left of the cell and numbers on the right. To change that, select the cells and click one of the three alignment buttons in the toolbar: Align left, Align center or Align right. They're the buttons with lines lined up each way.

Tip

Centering the titles in your first row is a quick way to make your sheet look tidier.

Make columns wider or rows taller

To make a column wider, put your mouse on the border to the right of its letter at the top of the grid, then drag it. For a row, drag the border below its number.

To make a column exactly as wide as its longest entry, double-click that same border.

For an exact size, right-click the column's letter and choose Column width…, or the row's number and choose Row height…. Type the size in pixels, then click Save.

Note

The widths and heights you set are kept with the sheet.

Merge cells into one

To make a title stretch across several columns, select the cells it should cover, right-click them and choose Merge cells. They become one cell.

The merged cell keeps what was in the top-left cell. If any of the others had something in them, cDox asks first, since what's in them will be cleared. Undo brings it back.

To split it again, right-click it and choose Unmerge cells.

Note

A sheet with merged cells can't be sorted, and the edge of frozen rows or columns can't run through them: unmerge them first. Merging is done with a mouse or trackpad.

Show long text in full

When text is too long for its cell, it carries on to a new line inside the box, but the row keeps its height. So the end of the text is hidden.

To see all of it, select the cells, open the Text wrapping menu in the toolbar (the icon with an arrow curling back to a new line) and choose Wrap. The row grows to show all the text.

Would you rather keep the text on one line? Choose Clip: the text is cut off at the cell's edge. That's useful for a column you want to keep narrow on purpose, like a short status column.

Note

If you've changed a row's height yourself, Wrap keeps your height instead of growing the row.

Keep headings in view while you scroll

In a big sheet, your column titles disappear as you scroll down. To keep them on screen, freeze the row. Click its number on the left to select it, then click the snowflake in the toolbar.

Every row up to and including that one stays at the top while the rest scrolls. It works for columns too: select a column by its letter, and the columns up to it stay on the left.

To unfreeze, click the snowflake again.

Tip

A thin line marks where the frozen part ends, so you can always tell what's frozen.

Add borders

To draw lines around some cells, select them and click the grid button in the toolbar (Cell borders). Choose:

  • All borders to box in every cell;
  • Outline for one frame around the whole group;
  • Top, Bottom, Left or Right for one side only, like a line under a total.

To take them off, choose No borders in the same menu.