Create a custom slicer style and modify slicer settings so that the slicer meets branding guidelines or matches the spreadsheet style.
Slicers are visual filters. We can use them to filter data in a Chart, PivotTable, or Pivot Chart.
By default, slicers will display in a one-column layout with the header displayed. The color of the slicer is determined by the theme in use in Excel.
The default look and feel of slicers and timelines are not always appropriate for the spreadsheet we are working on. It might be that we have company-branded colors that we need to use. Or maybe we need to change the layout of the slicer, so it fits better onto the worksheet.
We can customize every aspect of our slicers and create our reusable custom slicer.
Slicers can be inserted for any field in our data source. Timelines can only be inserted for date fields.
Repeat these steps to insert multiple slicers.
Slicers have their contextual ribbon that contains all the commands needed to modify and manage the slicer. We will focus on the Slicer Styles group.
We can change the color of the slicer by selecting a Slicer Style from the gallery. The colors we see in the gallery are determined by the theme we have in use in Excel. Currently, we have the ‘Office’ theme selected.
To see a different color palette, we need to change the theme.
To create our custom slicer style, we can modify an existing style or create a new style. If we decide we want to use most of the properties of an existing style but make some minor tweaks, it’s more efficient to modify the style. It’s worth noting that we cannot directly modify an in-built style, we need to duplicate it first.
We are also going to remove the border from the slicer.
And change the Fill Color to Dark Blue.
Select the Custom Slicer to apply it.
Now is the time to review the new slicer style and make any changes. Let’s change the header ‘Region’, to white, and bold, and change the hover-over color to light blue.
Note the formatting currently applied to the header.
Sometimes we might want to create a new slicer style that isn’t based on an existing style. We can create a new style from scratch.
The only real difference here is that we are starting from a blank, unformatted slicer. We change the formatting in the same way.
We can modify the slicer settings and control the layout and the information displayed on the slicer.
By default, slicers have a one-column layout. All items are listed in one column running vertically down the page. We can change this by modifying the columns.
We can use this technique to change our slicer from a vertical to horizontal slicer.
To keep the slicer looking clean, we could choose to hide the header. This will hide the slicer name, the multi-select button, and the clear button from view.
Resize the slicer by dragging the resize handles.
The slicer can now be positioned next to the chart.
The customizations ensure that the slicer looks like it is part of the chart and not a separate entity.
NOTE: If we choose not to display the header, the clear filter button is no longer accessible. We can still clear the filter, simply right-click on the slicer and choose Clear filter.
For additional information on this topic and more, check out our Pivot Table courses.
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