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This page covers the legacy rules used to control text appearance, number display, and cell-level styling.

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Font (character style) rule

Use the Font rule when you want to change the appearance of individual characters consistently across a target area. Key properties from the legacy support article:
  • Color for text color
  • Family for font family
  • Size for font size
  • Style for bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough
Use this rule for character-level styling. Use Paragraph style when the whole paragraph structure should change.

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Paragraph style rule

Use Paragraph style when you need paragraph-level formatting rather than character styling. The legacy support article calls out these capabilities:
  • Text alignment
  • Text wrapping
  • Indentation level
  • Paragraph spacing and line height
  • Bullet style
  • First-line and hanging indentation
Paragraph style is especially useful when every paragraph after the first should get the same formatting pattern.

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Number format rule

Use Number format when numeric values should be displayed differently without changing the underlying data. Legacy support guidance highlights:
  • Thousand separator
  • Decimal symbol
  • Magnitude such as thousands or millions
  • Decimal places
  • Negative number style
  • Zero display
  • Prefix and postfix
If the object is linked to Excel, the Excel format is the default starting point, but this rule can override it in Grunt.

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Fill rule

Use Fill when you want to color cells, chart artifacts, or graphics inside a Grunt object. The legacy support article notes that Fill can target:
  • Visual Grid cells
  • Shapes inside Visual Grid cells
  • Icons inside Visual Grid cells
  • Chart artifacts such as bars, lines, and funnels
Key settings:
  • Color
  • Blending mode
Use the Font rule for text color. Use Fill for the object background or graphic fill.

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Border rule

Use Border when the edge of a cell or graphic should communicate structure. Typical uses:
  • Separate header rows from content
  • Add emphasis around selected data
  • Create table-like framing without native PowerPoint borders
Common settings are border color, thickness, and which edges should be shown. This description is inferred from the legacy rule catalog and adjacent Grunt rule behavior.

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Text rotation rule

Use Text rotation when labels need a different reading direction, such as narrow headers or compact side labels. Typical use cases:
  • Rotated column headers
  • Vertical labels in dense tables
  • Compact text inside chart-style layouts
This rule is best used sparingly because aggressive rotation can reduce readability. This summary is inferred from the legacy rule catalog and surrounding layout guidance.

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When to combine these rules

These rules often work best together:
  • Font for character emphasis
  • Paragraph style for bullets, spacing, and indentation
  • Number format for numeric readability
  • Fill and Border for visual grouping
  • Text rotation for space-constrained labels
For alignment, margin, merge, and size behavior, continue to Layout and structure rules.