Many of the templates you download will have a completely white background except for the area used by the user interface. How do they “white-out” every single other cell, or change the entire background to another color?
Turn off the gridlines and sprinkle with formatting will do the trick! It’s easiest to do this before you design your spreadsheet.
1. Turn off gridlines
2. If you prefer something other than white: Select all cells(Ctrl + A) and use the paint bucket to change the fill color
3. Use the Borders Format Property 
to add color to the borders of the cells you actually use
December 2nd, 2004 at 3:58 pm
Another way for colour background is to make small uniform rectangle picture (for example in Paint), and then set it as a worksheet background (Format->Sheet->Background…). In this case background will not be printed, but it will make file little bit bigger, depending on proportions of the picture.
December 2nd, 2004 at 4:08 pm
Mladen
Agreed,
MS needs to work on their Format->Sheet->Background, besides not printing, I’d like to be able to control whether it tiles or not, and if so what direction. I could then have the same flexibility as I do with a webpage background.
December 3rd, 2004 at 1:47 am
I like to hide the columns to the right of the user area and the rows below the user area when I issue a template. This reduces the visual clutter for the end user, and helps in protecting calculation information if so desired.
The result is a nice small input/output sheet, with a grey area to the right and bottom into which one cannot “walk”/move/click.
December 3rd, 2004 at 10:11 am
Joerd,
Good idea. What is your technique for hiding all of the excess columns/rows?