borders grayed out

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rick C.
  • Start date Start date
R

Rick C.

I entered some rows in my spreadsheet ~below~ the main body of my
spreadsheet, after a blank line. I notice now that the cell borders on
these new rows are grey, the same color as cells that have no text in
them, unlike the solid black column borders that my regular rows have.
What did I do wrong and how can I correct this? Thanks.
 
The borders are a light grey by default. The solid black
borders have to be added manually by you. Use the borders
button on the formatting toolbar to select the border
style you would like to use (it's usually the one to the
left of the paint can button). Or you can copy the border
style used in the rows above by selecting those cells,
clicking the Format Painter icon (paint brush), then
selecting the cells you need to reformat.
 
Hi Rick,
Elaborating on parts of Mike's reply.
You can format the entire sheet to have borders and not have
to add them later for new rows. In fact formatting larger ranges
is more efficient than formatting single cell ranges (wish I could
refer to something from Microsoft on that point).

You can select all cells using ctrl+A, or the Select All button
at the intersection of the column letters and row numbers, or
Edit, Select All

and then format all of the cells at once from the drop down
menu of the cell borders icon, or from Format, cells, borders

Format painter can also be used to format all cells
select correctly formatted cell (warning will include all formatting
not just cell borders), then click on format painter icon, then
click on the Select All button.

HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm
 
And not to put too fine a point on it, but it sounds like your gray borders are
just gridlines. You can toggle the viewing of gridlines under:
Tools|Options|view Tab|check/uncheck Gridlines

And you can toggle the printing of gridlines via:
file|page setup|Sheet Tab|check/uncheck Gridlines

To me, it sounded like your darker lines are really borders (via
format|Cells|border) and the lighter lines are gridlines.

(The first thing I do is to turn off gridlines so I can see how my borders
actually look.)
 
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