# Styling sheets
### General styling
If you want to change the general styling of your sheet (not cell or range specific), you can use the `->setStyle()` method or any of the other setters which can be found inside the export documentation.
// Font family
$sheet->setFontFamily('Comic Sans MS');
// Set font with ->setStyle()`
$sheet->setStyle(array(
'font' => array(
'name' => 'Calibri',
'size' => 12,
'bold' => true
)
));
### Styling with PHPExcel methods
It's possible to style the sheets and specific cells with help of PHPExcel methods. This package includes a lot of shortcuts (see export documentation), but also always the use of the native methods.
// Set background color for a specific cell
$sheet->getStyle('A1')->applyFromArray(array(
'fill' => array(
'type' => PHPExcel_Style_Fill::FILL_SOLID,
'color' => array('rgb' => 'FF0000')
)
));
### Using HTML tags
Most of the HTML tags are supported.
<html>
<!-- Headings -->
<td><h1>Big title</h1></td>
<!-- Bold -->
<td><b>Bold cell</b></td>
<td><strong>Bold cell</strong></td>
<!-- Italic -->
<td><i>Italic cell</i></td>
<!-- Images -->
<td><img src="img.jpg" /></td>
</html>
> Inside the `view.php` config you can change how these tags will be interpreted by Excel by default.
### Using HTML attributes
Some of the basic styling can be done with HTML attributes.
<html>
<!-- Horizontal alignment -->
<td align="right">Big title</td>
<!-- Vertical alignment -->
<td valign="middle">Bold cell</td>
<!-- Rowspan -->
<td rowspan="3">Bold cell</td>
<!-- Colspan -->
<td colspan="6">Italic cell</td>
<!-- Width -->
<td width="100">Cell with width of 100</td>
<!-- Height -->
<td height="100">Cell with height of 100</td>
</html>
### Styling through inline-styles
It's possible to use inline styles inside your view files. Most of the general styles are supported.
<html>
<!-- Cell with black background -->
<td style="background-color: #000000;">Cell</td>
</html>
> Inside the reference guide you can find a list of supported styles.
### Styling through external CSS file
Styling can be done through an external CSS file.
External css file:
#cell {
background-color: #000000;
color: #ffffff;
}
.cell {
background-color: #000000;
color: #ffffff;
}
tr td {
background-color: #ffffff;
}
tr > td {
border-bottom: 1px solid #000000;
}
Table:
<html>
{{ HTML::style('css/table.css') }}
<!-- Cell styled with class -->
<td class="cell">Cell</td>
<!-- Cell styled with ID -->
<td id="cell">Cell</td>
</html>
> Inside the reference guide you can find a list of supported styles.
> It's advised to include `<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />` into the view to fix problems with UTF-8 encoding.