A Container

• The purpose of an Excel cell is to hold information. That information can consist of text, numbers and formulas. However, whichever of these things the cell holds, it can have an appearance that's separate from but related to what it's holding. This fact allows an Excel user a means to alter the meaning of the cell.
  
  

Formatting

• A cell holding a number that's formatted with a plain appearance doesn't give you many clues about what the number represents. But if you tell Excel to preface the number with a dollar sign and add a comma after every three digits, you recognize the number as representing currency. You can format Excel cells with many pre-existing formats, including percentages, scientific notation and dates. You can also define your own numeric and alphabetic formats.
  
  Text formatting is much like that in Microsoft Word. You can align the text of a cell to the left or right border of the cell, or center it horizontally. You can also specify that text run bottom to top instead of left to right.
  
  

Variable Meaning

• The purpose of an Excel cell may depend on what the function is of the person who's using Excel. If that person is a data entry worker, an Excel cell is a place to enter data. If the person is a manager, a cell can mean the place to look to answer the question "Is the company making or losing money?" For a programmer, a cell can mean a variable, which is a storage location for a program's information. It can also be like a Swiss army knife, having a plethora of sub-tools and properties she can leverage to write programs for a work team.
  
  

Presentation

• For a work team's presentation staff, a cell is something to be dressed up, or decorated for display in the best possible light for investors, bankers or others whom the presenters need to sell a concept to. A public relations employee, for example, would use the cell formatting tools mentioned earlier to convey his intended meaning clearly to his audience.