Precedence of Settings

You can designate which portion of the sheet you want to set characteristics for, such as a particular column or cell. Therefore, for an individual cell, there might be settings for the background colors for the sheet, the row the cell is in, the column the cell is in, and the cell itself.

The sheet determines which color to display by using a predefined precedence when applying property, function, or method settings. Individual cells have the highest precedence. For example, if you set the background color for cell B2 to red and the background color of row 2 is blue, the background color of column 2 is white, and the background color of the sheet is gray, the cell would display the color set for it (red), not for the row, column, or sheet.

The sheet uses the following method to determine the setting to apply to each element in the sheet:

Because of the precedence used by the sheet, many properties, functions, and methods that can be applied separately to different portions of the sheet provide a "default" setting. When you choose the default setting, the element, such as a cell, uses the setting for the next level setting available: the column, then the row, then the selected cell or odd/even row, or finally, the sheet.

The following properties allow you to set characteristics for different elements in the sheet, and use the predefined precedence to determine which setting to apply to which element:

The Font properties and cell type properties are handled in a different manner than these properties. For more information, see Font Object Settings and Cell Type Settings Remembered.