Microsoft Excel 2007's conditional formatting feature allows you to format cells based on certain criteria. As an example, you might want the row color to change based upon a credit or debit on a ...

Format Your Report Format your quarterly figures and the total as dollars and cents. To do this, select the cells of your data that represent dollar figures.

However, if you paste a differently formatted date, Excel accepts the source formatting. To further complicate the situation, Excel changes the format of the target cell to that of the pasted value!