Excel has always been a great program for analyzing numerical data, but even Excel 2003 came up a bit short in the presentation department. In Excel 2003 and earlier versions, you could have a maximum of 56 different colors in your workbook. In addition, you had no easy way to ensure that your colors looked good next to the other colors in your workbook; that is, unless you were a graphic designer and knew what you wanted going in.

Excel 2007 offers vast improvements over the color management and formatting options found in previous versions of the program. You can have as many different colors in a workbook as you like, for example, and you can assign a design theme to a workbook. Assigning a theme to a workbook offers you color choices that are part of a complementary whole, not just a dialog box with no guidance about which colors to choose.

The following graphic shows the range of themes from which you can choose and the colors available within one of those themes. And remember, you can pick any color you like; you’re not limited to colors presented as part of a theme!