Formatting monthly OpU workbooks with The Press

The Press's first step, Apply Formatting, presses consistent formatting into one or more of the four monthly workbooks before they get split by OpU. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded anywhere.

Selecting workbooks

Click Select File on any of the four workbook cards — ROIC, Net Position, Job Loss MTD, Job Loss YTD — and pick an .xlsx file. You don't need all four; Apply Formatting only processes the cards that have a file selected.

Additional Formatting fields

Each card has a set of fields — Header Cell, Row Color, Zoom %, Sort Column, Sort Order, Fill past blank rows — but they're grayed out until you check Additional Formatting?. ROIC ships with that box unchecked by default; the other three ship checked, matching how each workbook is normally formatted.

• Header Cell — the top-left data cell (e.g. A3).
• Row Color — the alternating-row fill color as a hex value; the hex box and the color swatch stay in sync either way you edit it.
• Zoom % — the sheet's zoom level.
• Sort Column — the column number to sort by.
• Sort Order — 1 for ascending, 2 for descending.

Set Print Area is separate from Additional Formatting and stays available regardless — checking it sets the sheet's print area to its used range.

Running it

Click Apply Formatting. Each selected workbook downloads separately as <original name>_formatted.xlsx; the Status box lists each one as it finishes.

Settings that stick, and one that doesn't

Every field except Period is remembered per-browser the next time you open The Press. Period isn't, on purpose — it's supposed to change every month, so a stale prefilled value would be misleading rather than convenient.