How can too much color hurt a spreadsheet?

Answer 1

The most important thing is that your formulas are correct and everything works. Colours are just used to highlight things and emphasise certain elements, like headings and totals. So they do not need to be used much. It is not a piece of art and Excel is not a graphics package. Too many colours can make it look gaudy. It can be very distracting. There is no use in having a very colourful workbook, if your formulas don't work. You will not get any plaudits for it. So you need to concentrate on getting your figures correct so that people that are using it can rely on the figures. That is what Excel is for.