Many people find spreadsheets intimidating. The secret to overcoming this? Make it look not like a spreadsheet. Simply hiding the clutter, adding interactive menus, and using shapes makes your workbook feel like a high-end, standalone application that people actually want to use. Here’s everything you need to make this happen.
Build a structured layout with high-contrast containers
Use shapes and color-blocking
Modern apps use defined “cards” or “widgets” to group related information and provide visual structure, and you can mimic this professionally in Excel.
However, before you start drawing, select the entire sheet (Ctrl+A or click the top-left triangle), right-click a column header, and reduce the Column Width to a small value (for example, around 2-3 units). Then, with all the cells still selected, right-click a row header and adjust the Row Height to create a dense “graph paper” grid that gives you much finer control over where your shapes and charts sit. To get that premium software feel, fill your worksheet cells (or the visible working area) with a dark gray background.
Instead of just entering data into raw cells, click Insert > Shapes, select the Rounded Rectangle, and reformat it with a slightly lighter tone that contrasts the background fill. These shapes create a visual nest for your charts and key metrics, giving your “app” the structured depth that people expect from dedicated software.
When resizing containers to fit your layout, hold Alt while dragging the corners. This snaps the shape’s edges to the cell grid, helping everything line up precisely.
For titles, right-click the shape and click Edit Text. For dynamic data, insert a Text Box over your card, select the border, and type = followed by a cell reference (such as =Database!$Z$1) in the formula bar to mirror the value of that cell.
For consistency, repeat this layout on each worksheet.
And identify the active screen
A true app doesn’t require users to hunt through tabs at the bottom of the window—it has a persistent navigation rail. You can build one by placing a tall, narrow rectangle on the left side of your main sheet.
For functionality, place text boxes or icons inside that sidebar. Right-click a shape, select Link (or Hyperlink), and choose Place in This Document to target a specific sheet. When you’ve finished creating the menu, duplicate it on all the sheets, and add a thin vertical rectangle next to the active menu item to make it feel reactive.
By default, Excel turns hyperlinks blue and underlines them, which can clash with your design—especially inside text boxes and shapes. To prevent this from happening automatically, go to File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options > AutoFormat As You Type and uncheck Internet and network paths with hyperlinks. This stops Excel from automatically converting text into blue, underlined hyperlinks as you type, allowing you to apply your own styling without it being overridden.
Use Slicers to make data manipulation tactile
If your “app” requires users to filter data, don’t make them use those small default filter arrows. Instead, use Slicers—big, touch-friendly buttons that instantly filter your visuals.
To keep the “app” look, avoid connecting a Slicer directly to raw data. Instead, create a PivotTable on a hidden backend worksheet to act as your engine. Build PivotCharts from that PivotTable, then copy them to your main interface. When you insert a Slicer for that PivotTable (PivotTable Analyze > Insert Slicer) and copy it to your UI, it acts as a remote control: clicking a button on the Slicer updates the chart, even though all data processing happens safely on a different sheet.
To make one Slicer control multiple charts at once, right-click the Slicer, select Report Connections, and check the boxes for every PivotTable driving your dashboard. This creates a unified “command center” feel.
Once your Slicer is on the interface, you need to get rid of the default styling. Select the Slicer, head to the Slicer tab, and browse the Slicer Styles gallery. Pick a dark style that complements your layout, right-click it, and select Duplicate. Then, right-click the duplicated Slicer and select Modify to tweak the borders and colors.
Your Excel PivotTable isn’t complete until you add these two pro-level features
Stop treating PivotTables as the finish line—add Slicers and Timelines to turn your spreadsheet into an interactive dashboard.
Design frameless “floating” charts for a seamless visual flow
Remove chart borders and axes
Standard Excel charts and PivotCharts have borders and axes, making them look like stickers slapped onto a page. To make visualizations feel more integrated, you should strip out the default formatting. Right-click your chart and select Format Chart Area. Then, set the Fill to No fill and the Border to No line. If you’re dealing with a PivotChart, click Hide All in the Field Buttons menu.
Next, select one of the chart’s gridlines and press Delete to remove them, and do the same with the Y-axis labels and legend. Now, click the Chart Elements button (+), check Data Labels, and choose Outside End.
In short, the aim is to make the data appear to float effortlessly within your structured containers and blend into your software’s custom UI, and these minor changes achieve these goals in no time.
Right-click a data bar, select Format Series, and reduce the Gap Width to make the bars wider, thus giving them a more app-like appearance.
Hide the window chrome and ribbon
Force a full-screen experience
Now that your visual interface is built, it’s time for the magic trick: making the spreadsheet disappear. Up until now, you likely needed the column and row headings and the formula bar to make sure everything was perfectly aligned and all formulas were correct, but for the end user, they’re unnecessary clutter. As soon as you uncheck Headings and Formula Bar in the View tab, the “Excel-ness” instantly vanishes, and your custom containers and floating charts take center stage.
To complete the illusion, you should hide the Excel window’s structural elements. Go to File > Options > Advanced, scroll down to Display options for this workbook, and uncheck Show sheet tabs. This forces users to use the custom navigation menu you built earlier.
Finally, use the Ribbon Display Options (in the top-right corner) or press Ctrl+Shift+F1 to hide the ribbon for a cleaner, full-screen feel.
One key to achieving this app-like feel is ensuring the end user can’t see the underlying figures that drive the interface—they only see what they need to see. This mirrors the approach developers take when designing an app—you never see the raw code used to make the UI tick. With this in mind, when building your next project, organize your workbook into three functional layers: a source tab for raw data, a logic tab for the calculations, and a series of linked interface tabs that your coworkers can use without breaking your hard work.
- OS
-
Windows, macOS, iPhone, iPad, Android
- Free trial
-
1 month
Microsoft 365 includes access to Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on up to five devices, 1 TB of OneDrive storage, and more.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
