Changing Excel's Background Color

The standard background color in Excel is white. You may, at some time, want to change the background color to something else, such as a light grey. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the background color; it is not a configurable option in Excel. There are a few things you can try as workarounds, however.

One approach involves selecting all the cells in the worksheet and applying a fill color to the cells. If you don't want the color to print, then you simply need to select all the cells and remove the fill color. This could be automated by using a macro to do the color removal, printing, and re-application.

There are drawbacks to such an approach, however. First, the colors used to fill the cells could interfere with the successful application of conditional formatting, if the conditional formatting involves the use of fill colors. (Conditional formatting applied to font specifications shouldn't be a problem.) Plus, adding a fill color will obscure the visibility of the grid lines, which makes it a bit more difficult to navigate through your worksheet.

Another option is to create, in your favorite graphics program, a small rectangle that matches the color you want used for your background. Save the small rectangle as a graphics file, using the PNG file format. Then, within Excel, follow these steps:

1. Display the Page Layout tab of the ribbon.
2. Click the Background tool, in the Page Setup group. Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 display the Sheet Background dialog box. In Excel 2013 and later versions you see the Insert Pictures screen in which you should click the Browse link at the right of the From a File option. You'll then see the Sheet Background dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Sheet Background dialog box.

3. Use the controls in the dialog box to locate and select the graphic image you created (the small rectangle of color).
4. Click the Insert button.

The graphic image is placed in the background and repeated over and over again so that it fills the entire background. The benefit to this approach is that it doesn't affect any conditional formatting and the background image won't print.

Speaking of conditional formatting, if you aren't using conditional formatting for any purpose in a worksheet, you could use it to create your background. In a blank area of your workbook, define a cell that contains the value True. Then select your worksheet that you want to have the background color and use a conditional format to define that color. The format can look at the cell you defined, and if it is True, then the color is applied. If the cell is not True, then the color is not applied. This allows you to turn the background color on or off (for printing) by changing the value of a single cell.

You could also define styles for use in your worksheet. Define a style that has the desired background color, and another that does not. You can then apply the colored style when editing and the non-colored style when preparing to print.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6121) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Changing Excel's Background Color.