Hi Bernard and thanks for the reply.
I sort of guessed it was something along those lines but was surprised
because the feature seems to have such prominence when viewed on a reasonably
high resolution screen and was not a feature in the 2003 version, at least I
don’t think it was.
I am very quickly getting to like this new ‘Ribbon’ system but again this
feature seems prominent on my machine and I have at least a quarter of the
ribbon (Home Ribbon)  showing this feature when the program is expanded full
screen. I just thought it must therefore have a higher importance than I
guess it does.
Thanks again…….
Steve…..

Hi Nick and thanks for your reply…
I think you are absolutely spot on and I could not figure why there was this
prominence to the formatting I referred to and also I did not realise that
the ones in question, “Good, Bad, and Neutral” were just examples bundled as
the default  and presumberly Microsoft’s best guess as to what users might
want to use them for. I was not aware initially that they are fully
customisable. I wondered why they would give prominence to some kind of
format/audit colouring system and thought I was missing something!
As you suggest, we have always focussed on the numbers but as the day has
progressed (the family are out for the day)  I have also produced some more
colourful numbers. Who knows, I may even fire up ‘Publisher’ next !
Thanks again Nick……..