What is a Cell?
This article will help you get familiar with the concept of cells.
What is a Cell?
A cell is the basic data unit in a worksheet. Cells are organized in rows and columns and can also be referred as an intersection point of a column and a row. Cells are identified by a letter and number combination that indicates the letter of their column and the number of their row. For example, the top left cell is referred to as A1 and the bottom right cell is – XFD1048576.
What are its characteristics?
Cells have the following characteristics:
Value and Formatting: A cell serves as a rudimentary storage unit in a worksheet and it can be assigned any text, number, Boolean or formula value. Additionally, each cell can be styled using various fonts, font sizes, fore and background colors, bold, italics, underline. Cells also have support for how text is aligned both horizontally and vertically, as well as indentation and text rotation settings, and so on.
Fill: Cells can be styled with pattern fills with various colors and pattern styles. The model also supports gradient fills that allow you to specify two colors and choose between six shading styles.
Borders: Each cell can have left, right, top, bottom and diagonal borders or any combination of these. Additionally, the borders can appear with different styles and color.
Text Wrap: The wrapping text option formats the cell so that its contained text appears on multiple lines.
Copy and Paste: The document model allows you to copy the contents of an arbitrary region of cells and choose the data and formatting to be included in the paste region. The model supports seven types of special paste options: All, Formulas, Formulas and Number Formatting, Column Widths, Values, Values and Number Formatting, Formatting. More information on the copy/paste feature is available in the Clipboard Support article.
Fill Data Automatically: The document model helps you fill the contents of a specified set of cells automatically, based on some initial values. You can simply repeat or construct linear, exponential, date and auto fill data series. For more information see the Fill Data Automatically section.
Merge and Unmerge: Adjacent cells can be merged so that they appear as one. In this way, a single cell can span over several rows and/or columns. For more information refer to the Merge and Unmerge Cells article.