When you create a new, blank spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, and you are using the default settings, you see gridlines that indicate the size of your individual cells. These are effective when you are looking at that sheet on your computer screen, and when you haven’t made any formatting changes.
But as more and more actions are taken on that spreadsheet, you may find that you need some additional indication of the separation of your cells. Fortunately you can achieve this by adding borders to a cell. You can do this the same way for individual cells, or even for the entire spreadsheet.
How to Add Borders to Cells in Excel
The steps in this article were performed in the Excel for Office 365 version of the application, but will also work in other Excel versions after the 2007 version.
Note that borders and gridlines are different things. If you are trying to add borders to your cells when you print, then consider changing the gridline setting on the Page Layout tab instead by checking the box to the left of Print under Gridlines.
Step 1: Open your spreadsheet in Excel.
Step 2: Select the cell(s) to which you wish to apply a border. Note that you can select the entire sheet by clicking the gray button above the row 1 heading and to the left of the column A heading.
Step 3: Click the Home tab at the top of the window, then click the arrow to the right of the Borders button in the Font section of the ribbon.
Step 4: Select the type of border that you wish to apply to the selected cells. If you want to add borders to all sides of your cell, for example, click the All Borders option.
If you wish to make changes to the style of the borders, you can select the More Borders option from the bottom of the menu in step 4.
Do some of your cells have row shading that you don’t want, or is no longer useful? Find out how to remove all row shading from a spreadsheet in Excel.
Matt Jacobs has been working as an IT consultant for small businesses since receiving his Master’s degree in 2003. While he still does some consulting work, his primary focus now is on creating technology support content for SupportYourTech.com.
His work can be found on many websites and focuses on topics such as Microsoft Office, Apple devices, Android devices, Photoshop and more.