Apply or remove cell borders on a worksheet
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By using predefined border styles, you can quickly add a border around cells or ranges of cells. If predefined cell borders do not meet your needs, you can create a custom border.
Note: Cell borders that you apply appear on printed pages. If you do not use cell borders but want worksheet gridline borders to be visible on printed pages, you can display the gridlines. For more information, see Print with or without cell gridlines.
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On a worksheet, select the cell or range of cells that you want to add a border to, change the border style on, or remove a border from.
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On the Home tab, in the Font group, do one of the following:
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To apply a new or different border style, click the arrow next to Borders , and then click a border style.
Tip: To apply a custom border style or a diagonal border, click More Borders. In the Format Cells dialog box, on the Border tab, under Line and Color, click the line style and color that you want. Under Presets and Border, click one or more buttons to indicate the border placement. Two diagonal border buttons are available under Border.
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To remove cell borders, click the arrow next to Borders , and then click No Border .
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The Borders button displays the most recently used border style. You can click the Borders button (not the arrow) to apply that style.
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If you apply a border to a selected cell, the border is also applied to adjacent cells that share a bordered cell boundary. For example, if you apply a box border to enclose the range B1:C5, the cells D1:D5 acquire a left border.
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If you apply two different types of borders to a shared cell boundary, the most recently applied border is displayed.
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A selected range of cells is formatted as a single block of cells. If you apply a right border to the range of cells B1:C5, the border is displayed only on the right edge of the cells C1:C5.
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If you want to print the same border on cells that are separated by a page break, but the border appears on only one page, you can apply an inside border. This way, you can print a border at the bottom of the last row of one page and use the same border at the top of the first row on the next page. Do the following:
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Select the rows on both sides of the page break.
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Click the arrow next to Borders , and then click More Borders.
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Under Presets, click the Inside button .
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Under Border, in the preview diagram, remove the vertical border by clicking it.
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On a worksheet, select the cell or range of cells that you want to remove a border from.
To cancel a selection of cells, click any cell on the worksheet.
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On the Home tab, in the Font group, click the arrow next to Borders , and then click No Border .
—OR—
Click Home > the Borders arrow > Erase Border, and then select the cells with the border you want to erase.
You can create a cell style that includes a custom border, and then you can apply that cell style when you want to display the custom border around selected cells.
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On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Cell Styles.
Tip: If you do not see the Cell Styles button, click Styles, and then click the More button next to the cell styles box.
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Click New Cell Style.
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In the Style name box, type an appropriate name for the new cell style.
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Click Format.
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On the Border tab, under Line, in the Style box, click the line style that you want to use for the border.
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In the Color box, select the color that you want to use.
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Under Border, click the border buttons to create the border that you want to use.
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Click OK.
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In the Style dialog box, under Style Includes (By Example), clear the check boxes for any formatting that you do not want to include in the cell style.
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Click OK.
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To apply the cell style, do the following:
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Select the cells that you want to format with the custom cell border.
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On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Cell Styles.
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Click the custom cell style that you just created. Like the FancyBorderStyle button in this picture.
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To customize the line style or color of cell borders or erase existing borders, you can use the Draw Borders options. To draw cell borders, you’ll first select the border type, then the border color and line style, and select the cells that you want to add a border around. Here’s how:
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Click Home > the Borders arrow .
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Pick Draw Borders for outer borders or Draw Border Grid for gridlines.
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Click the Borders arrow > Line Color arrow, and then pick a color.
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Click the Borders arrow > Line Style arrow, and then pick a line style.
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Select cells you want to draw borders around.
Add a border, border color, or border line style
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Select the cell or range of cells that you want to add a border around, change the border style on, or remove a border from.
2. Click Home > the Borders arrow, and then pick the border option you want.
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Add a border color — Click the Borders arrow > Border Color, and then pick a color
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Add a border line style — Click the Borders arrow > Border Style, and then pick a line style option.
Tips
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The Borders button shows the most recently used border style. To apply that style, click the Borders button (not the arrow).
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If you apply a border to a selected cell, the border is also applied to adjacent cells that share a bordered cell boundary. For example, if you apply a box border to enclose the range B1:C5, the cells D1:D5 will acquire a left border.
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If you apply two different types of borders to a shared cell boundary, the most recently applied border is displayed.
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A selected range of cells is formatted as a single block of cells. If you apply a right border to the range of cells B1:C5, the border is displayed only on the right edge of the cells C1:C5.
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If you want to print the same border on cells that are separated by a page break, but the border appears on only one page, you can apply an inside border. This way, you can print a border at the bottom of the last row of one page and use the same border at the top of the first row on the next page. Do the following:
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Select the rows on both sides of the page break.
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Click the arrow next to Borders , and then click the Inside Horizontal Border
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Remove a border
To remove a border, select the cells with the border and click the Borders arrow > No Border.
Need more help?
You can always ask an expert in the Excel Tech Community or get support in the Answers community.
See Also
Change the width of cell borders
Need more help?
What are the Borders in Excel?
Borders in Excel are outlined in data tables or a specific range of cells. In Excel, borders are used to separate the data in borders from the rest of the text. It is a good way of representing data. In addition, it helps the user to look for specific data easily. These borders are available in the “Home” tab in the fonts section.
Table of contents
- What are the Borders in Excel?
- Explained
- How to Create and Add Borders in Excel? (with Examples)
- Example #1
- Example #2
- Example #3
- Example #4
- Things to Remember While Creating Borders in Excel
- Recommended Articles
Explained
We can add the border to a single cell or multiple cells. Borders are of different styles and can be used as per the requirement.
Borders help present the data set in a more presentable format in ExcelFormatting is a useful feature in Excel that allows you to change the appearance of the data in a worksheet. Formatting can be done in a variety of ways. For example, we can use the styles and format tab on the home tab to change the font of a cell or a table.read more.
We can use borders for tabular format data or headlines to emphasize a specific set of data or can be used to distinguish different sections.
- We can use it to define or divide the sections of a worksheet.
- We can use it to emphasize specific data.
- We can also make the data more understandable and presentable.
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How to Create and Add Borders in Excel? (with Examples)
We can create and add borders to the specific set of data.
Example #1
We have data of marks of a student for three subjects of an annual examination. We will have to add the borders in this data to make it more presentable.
- Now, we must select the data we want to add to the borders.
- In the font group on the “Home” tab, click the down arrow next to the “Borders” button. You may see the drop-down list of borders, as shown in the figure below.
- We have different borders styles. Therefore, we may select the “OUTSIDE BORDERS” option for our data.
- We may find the result by using “OUTSIDE BORDERS” in the data.
Now, let us learn with some more examples.
Example #2
We have data of marks of a student for three subjects of an annual examination. We will have to add the borders in this data to make it more presentable.
- Data of marks of 5 students for three subjects in an annual examination is shown below.
- Now, we must select the data we want to add to the borders.
- Now, in the “Font” group on the “Home” tab, we need to click the down arrow next to the “Borders” button. As shown in the figure below, we may see the drop-down list of borders.
- Now that we have different border styles, we must select the “THICK OUTSIDE BORDERS” option for data.
- As a result, we may find the result by using “THICK OUTSIDE BORDERS” to the data shown below.
Example #3
We have data on the marks of a student for three subjects of an annual examination. We will have to add the borders in this data to make it more presentable.
- Data of marks of 5 students for three subjects in an annual examination is shown below.
- Now, select the data to which you want to add borders.
- Now, in the “Font” group on the “Home” tab, we may need to click the down arrow next to the “Borders” button. And we may see the drop-down list of borders as shown in the figure below. Then, select the “ALL BORDERS” options for the data.
- As a result, we may find the result by using “ALL BORDERS” to the data.
Example #4
We have data on the marks of a student for three subjects of an annual examination. We need to add the borders in this data to make it more presentable.
- Data of marks of 5 students for three subjects in an annual examination is shown below.
- Now, we must select the data we want to add borders.
- Now, in the “Font” group on the “Home” tab. Then, we need to click the down arrow next to the “Borders” button. As shown in the figure below, we may see the drop-down list of borders. Now, select the “ALL BORDERS” options for our data.
- We may now find the result using “ALL BORDERS” in the data.
- As shown in the figure below, we can change the border’s thickness per the requirement. Select the data you want to change the border’s thickness for this.
- We need to go to the border drop-down list and click “LINE STYLE.”
- Now, we get a list of line styles and use the style as per the requirements. We will use the second last line style for our data.
- We may get the result as shown below.
Things to Remember While Creating Borders in Excel
- We select cells where the border needs to be added.
- The borders differentiate the data separately.
- We can change border styles by the “Borders” icon in the “Font” tab.
Recommended Articles
This article has been a guide to Borders in Excel. Here, we discuss how to create/add cell borders in Excel using different options and examples. You may also look at these useful functions in Excel: –
- Borders in VBA Excel
- VBA Select Cell
- Shortcut for Excel Format Painter
- Format Number in VBA
- Marksheet in Excel
Reader Interactions
The borders make any picture a stand out of the crowd. They are also great tool for grouping same kind of object and area. In shorts, Borders are very good for visual data grouping and representation.
In this article, we will learn how to apply borders around excel cells and group of cells.
Apply Borders From Home Tab
On home tab, in font section, you’ll find a small icon as shown in image. This is used to quickly apply borders around the cells.
If you directly click on the icon, last used border style is applied on the selected cells. If you click on the small arrow besides it, excel will show you a list of border styles to choose from. In these border style options, four options are used most frequently, which are highlighted in the image above. We will talk about them shortly.
Apply Borders From Format Cells Option
Another way to apply borders to cells is Format Cells option. Select the range you want to apply borders and press CTRL+1 to open format cells option.
You can see border’s tab. Click on it. Now you can see a variety of options available. This can be used to apply borders in detail.
How to apply border to all cell in selection?
The sequential shortcut to apply borders to all cells is ALT>H>B>A. Other way is to apply it from home tab.
Go to home? Font? Borders? All Borders. This outlines each sell in selection with a thin line.
How to apply border to outside the selection?
To just apply thin borders outside the selection use shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+7. Or sequential shortcut ALT>H>B>S. You can also go to home tab as you did before.
This option applies borders outside th selected range and leaves inner cells as it.
How to apply thick border to outside the selection?
Another most used border option is thick border. This can be used to show group of cells is part of another bigger group.
To apply thick border, you can use sequential shortcut in ALT>H>B>T. Or you can use the home tab to apply thick border around a group of cells.
How to remove all borders from selection?
The shortcut to remove the borders is CTRL+SHIFT+_. The sequential shortcut is ALT>H>B>N.
Another way is to go to home tab and the select no borders from borders option.
This removes any border applied on selected cells.
How to change line color of border?
Well, I don’t change line color frequently but if you want to chang line color, you can do that too.
You can see the line color option in the bottom in border options list from home tab.
The the sequential keyboard shortcut is ALT>H>B>I. The colors will pop up to choose from.
How to change line style of border in Excel?
Below line color option, you can also see line style option. The sequential keyboard shortcut for border line style option is ALT>H>B>Y.
You can choose from a variety of line styles here.
So yeah guys this how borders in excel 2016 is used. You do more by clicking on more borders. Let me know if have any other query regarding this or any other topic of excel. The comment section is all yours.
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When working with large amounts of data, it can sometimes be hard to read the data, if not formatted properly.
Moreover, there are usually parts of the dataset that are more important than others, so you would want these cells to stand out from the rest. This can get the reader to concentrate more on the important areas of the dataset.
There are a number of ways to improve the readability of your data. A very effective way is to add borders around the cells.
Borders can also be customized to highlight important cells. For example, you can use a thicker border to make the Grand total or some important data value stand out.
Excel provides several options for cell borders. In this tutorial, I will show you three different ways to apply borders to cells in Excel.
The options you choose and how you apply them to your spreadsheets will be up to your creativity. But I can guarantee you this, you’ll be spoilt for choice.
Say we have a dataset as the one given below.
We notice two things here:
- The cells do have gridlines, but they could be more readable if there were borders around every cell containing data.
- The most important cell in this dataset is the Grand Total. So, it would help if we could make this particular cell more pronounced by adding a thicker border around it.
There are three ways to add and customize cell borders in Excel:
- By accessing the Border button from the Home tab
- By accessing the Format Cell dialog box’s Border tab.
- By manually drawing the borders.
We are going to take a look at each of the above ways one by one.
How to Add Borders from the Home Tab
- Select the cells around which you want to add borders. To select individual cells, press down the control key, and select each cell. To select a group of cells, drag your mouse over the group of cells you want to select.
- Click the arrow next to the Borders button. You will find it in the Home tab, under the ‘Font’ group.
- A dropdown menu should now appear. This will contain quick border options that you can apply to your selected cells. In our dataset, we applied simple grid-like single borders around each cell. We also added a thick border around the grand total to make it stand out.
Here’s how the dataset looks after applying borders:
The borders provided an instant ‘lift’ to the entire dataset.
The Borders button dropdown provides a selection of common border options that you can quickly apply to your selection. You can choose to have individual borders on the top, bottom, left, or right. You can also combine 2 to 3 borders or have all 4 borders for each selection.
Additionally included in this menu are options for various border styles, like thick border, double border, and other common border combinations.
If you want more options, though, you can navigate to the Format Cells dialog box.
How to Add Borders from the Format Cells Dialog Box
Another way to add borders to cells or ranges is to use the Format Cells dialog box. While it has many of the same options to apply borders, you get access to many more additional options as well.
For example, here’s just a glance at the dialog box’s Border tab:
- On the left of the dialog box, there’s a ‘Style’ section, where you can select the type of border you want, like dashed, dotted, thick, double, and more.
- The ‘Color’ section is also present on the left side. As the name suggests, this lets you select the color you want for the borders.
- The right side top portion has some ‘Presets’ that you can select to quickly add borders either in between cells or around cells.
- The lower portion of the right side is the main ‘Border’ section. This lets you select which parts of your selection you want your borders on.
- This section also provides a small preview of how your selections are going to look when you apply your choice of borders on them.
There are a number of ways to open the Format Cells Dialog box:
Here are the steps to follow when you want to add borders using the Format Cells dialog box:
- Use any of the above methods to open the ‘Format Cells’ Dialog box.
- Select the Border tab.
- Here you will see a whole assortment of border options that you can play around with. For our example, we made the following selections:
- An orange accent line color
- A dashed line style
- The Outline preset
- The Inside preset
- When you’re done putting all your border settings, click OK to close the dialog box. Your borders will now get applied to your selections.
How to Add Borders by Manually Drawing Them
Finally, if you want more control over individual borders, you can use the ‘Draw Borders’ feature of Excel.
Draw Borders gives you the flexibility to draw even irregular shaped border, something that can be quite tough to do using the Format Cells dialog box.
Here’s a quick look at the different options you get under the Draw Borders feature:
- Draw Border: This lets you draw a border along any gridline. When you select a block of cells in this mode, it creates a rectangular border around the outside of the selected block of cells.
- Draw Border Grid: This also lets you draw a border along any gridline, but when you select a block of cells in this mode, it creates borders both inside and outside the block of cells (to form a grid).
- Erase Border: This lets you erase any previously created borders individually or collectively.
- Line Color: This lets you select the color of the individual borders.
- Line Style: This lets you select the type of individual borders, like dashed, dotted, thick, double, etc.
Here’s how to use the Draw Borders feature:
- Since you are going to manually draw individual borders one by one, you don’t need to have any cells selected.
- Click the arrow next to the Borders button. You will find it in the Home tab, under the ‘Font’ group.
- From the dropdown menu that appears, navigate down to the ‘Draw Borders’ section.
- First, select the line color
- And then select the border style
- Notice that as soon as you select an option from the Draw Borders section, your mouse pointer turns into a pencil, to tell you that you are now in ‘Draw Border’ mode.
- Go ahead and draw your borders along any gridline you like. You can even create a rectangular border by clicking and dragging around any block of cells. We have chosen to just draw two thick borders above and below the grand total.
- Once you’re done drawing all your required borders, you can come out of the border drawing mode by clicking on the Border button (under the Home tab) again.
Here is what our dataset looks like after drawing borders above and below the grand total:
The Difference between Borders and Gridlines
Before you start applying borders to your cells, it is important to understand the basic difference between borders and gridlines.
Gridlines are the light-colored boxes around every cell in your sheet. They are there to help define individual cell borders. In Excel, there are options to show or hide the gridlines when you take a print of your worksheet.
Borders, on the other hand, help to accent a cell or set of cells. So even if you choose not to display gridlines in your printout, your borders will remain visible and get printed, unless you remove them.
Additionally, when you hide gridlines in the Excel window, they get hidden for the entire worksheet. But with borders, you can choose to have them displayed on specific cells or ranges, even when gridlines are hidden.
Also read: How to Remove Borders in Excel? 6 Easy Ways!
So, in this Excel tutorial, I showed you three ways in which you can add borders to your cells, both individually and in bulk.
I would encourage you to experiment with the different border settings to see which style suits you and your data.
You can also use these border settings to create your own signature style for highlighting important cells in spreadsheets.
I hope you found this tutorial useful!
Other Excel tutorials you may find useful:
- How to AutoFormat Formulas in Excel (3 Easy Ways)
- How to Highlight Every Other Row in Excel
- How to Set the Default Font in Excel (Windows and Mac)
- How to Remove Dotted Lines in Excel
- How to Flash an Excel Cell
- How to Remove Panes in Excel Worksheet (Shortcut)
- How to Add a Total Row in Excel Table
- How to Add Bullet Points in Excel
- How to Change Theme Colors in Excel?
- How to Add Border to a Chart in Excel
This post will guide you how to change the border color of selected cells in your worksheet in Excel 2013/2016. How do I change border colors to multiple sections of your worksheet in Excel.
- Change Cell Border Color with Border Command
- Change Cell Border Color with Font Setting
Change Cell Border Color with Border Command
Assuming that you have a list of data in range A1:B6, and you want to change the border color of this range from the default gray color to red color in your current worksheet, just do the following steps:
#1 go to HOME tab, click Border command under Font group.
#2 move your mouse over the Line Color menu from the drop down menu list, and select red color from the Color setting box.
#3 you should notice that the current cursor has been changed as a pencil icon. You should drag the pencil cursor from Cell A1 to Cell B6. Then the border color of the range A1:B6 will be changed as red color.
Change Cell Border Color with Font Setting
You can change the border color for the different cells or range to organize or sort data so that the data can be easy to read and understand. There is another method to change your border color to distinguish between two ranges of data and help you better understand the data. Here are the steps:
#1 select the cell to which you want to add borders.
#2 go to HOME tab, click the Font Settings button at the bottom-right corner of the Font group. And the Format Cells dialog will open.
#3 switch to Border tab in the Format Cells dialog box, and click the drop down menu list of Color , then select one color that you want to use for your borders, such as: red color.
#4 click the Outline button under Presets section, or click the buttons around the border preview at the right of the window to add your borders. Then click Ok button to apply these border settings to your selected range of cells.
#5 you should notice that the border color of the selected range has been changed as red color.
Excel Borders (Table of Contents)
- Borders in Excel
- How to add Borders in Excel?
Borders in Excel
Borders are the boxes formed by lines in the cell in Excel. By keeping borders, we can frame any data and provide them with a proper define limit. To distinguish specific values, outline summarized values or separate data in ranges of cells; you can add a border around cells.
How to add Borders in Excel?
Adding borders in Excel is very easy and useful to outline or separate specific data or highlight some values in a worksheet. Normally, we can easily add all top, bottom, left, or right borders for selected cells in Excel. Option for Borders is available in the Home menu, under the font section with the icon of Borders. We can also use shortcuts to apply borders in Excel.
You can download this Borders Excel Template here – Borders Excel Template
Let’s understand how to add Borders in Excel.
Example #1
For accessing Borders, go to Home and select the option as shown in the below screenshot under the Font section.
Once we click on the option of Borders shown above, we will have a list of all kind of borders provided by Microsoft in its drop-down option, as shown below.
Here we have categorized Borders into 4 sections. This would be easy to understand because all sections are different from each other.
The first section is a basic section with only Bottom, Top, Left, and Right Borders. By this, we can only create one side border only for one cell or multiple cells.
The second section is the full border section, which has No Border, All Borders, Outside Borders, and Thick Box Borders. By this, we can create a full border that can cover a cell and a table as well. We can also remove the border as well from the selected cell or table by clicking on No Border.
The third section is a combination of the bottom borders, Bottom Double Border, Thick Bottom Border, Top and Bottom Border, Top and Thick Bottom Border, and Top Double Bottom Border.
These types of double borders are majorly used in underlining the headlines or important texts.
The Fourth section has a customized border section, where we can draw or create a border as per our need or make changes in the existing border type. We can change the color, thickness of the border as well in this section of Borders.
Once we click on the More Borders Option at the bottom, we will see a new dialog box named Format Cells, which is a more advanced option for creating Borders. It is shown below.
Example #2
We have seen the basic function and use for all kinds of borders and how to create those in the previous example. Now we will see an example where we will choose and implement different Borders and see how those Borders in any table or data can be framed.
We have a data table, which has details of Owner, Block, and Apartment No. Now we will frame the Borders and see how the data would look like.
As row 2 is the headline, we will prefer a double bottom line selected from the third section.
And all cell will be covered with a box of All Borders which can be selected from the second section.
And if we select Thick Border from the second section, then the whole table will be bound to a perfect box, and selected data will automatically get highlighted. Once we are done with all the mentioned border type, our table would like this, as shown below.
As we can see, the complete data table is getting highlighted and ready to be presented in any form.
Example #3
There is another way to frame borders in excel. This is one of the shortcuts of accessing the functions available in excel. For accessing borders, the shortcut way first selects the data we want to frame with borders and then press ALT + H + B simultaneously to enable the border menu in Excel.
ALT + H will enable the Home menu, B will enable the borders.
Once we do that, we will get a list of all kinds of borders available in excel. And this list itself will have the specific keys mentioned to set for any border as shown and circled in the below screenshot.
We can navigate to our required Border type by pressing the Key highlighted in the above screenshot, or else we can use direction keys to scroll up and down to get the desired border frame. Let’s use All Borders for this case by pressing ALT+H+B+A simultaneously after selecting the data table. Once we do that, we will see the selected data is now framed with all borders. And each cell will be now having its own border in black lines, as shown.
Let’s frame one more border of another type with the same process. Select the data first and then press ALT+H+B+T Keys simultaneously. We will see that data is framed with Thick Borders, as shown in the below screenshot.
Pros of Print Borders in Excel
- Creating the border around the desired data table makes data presentable to anyone.
- Border frame in any data set is quite useful when printing the data or pasting the data in any other file. By this, we make the data look perfectly covered.
Things to Remember
- Borders can be used with the shortcut key Alt + H + B, which will directly take us to the Border option.
- Giving a border in any data table is very important. We must provide the border after every work so that the data set can be bound.
- Always make proper alignment so that once we frame the data with a border and use it in different sources, the column width will be automatically set.
Recommended Articles
This has been a guide to Borders in Excel. Here we discussed how to add Borders in Excel and use shortcuts for borders in Excel along with practical examples and a downloadable excel template. You can also go through our other suggested articles –
- LEFT Formula in Excel
- VBA Borders
- Format Cells in Excel
- Print Gridlines in Excel
Add Outline Border
This Excel Shortcut adds an Outline Border.
PC Shorcut:Ctrl+Shift+&
Mac Shorcut:⌘+⌥+0
Add Or Remove Top Border
This Excel Shortcut adds or removes the Top Border.
PC Shorcut:ALT>H>B>T
Mac Shorcut:⌘+⌥+↑
Remember This Shortcut:
Alt is the command to activate the Ribbon shortcuts. H for Home, B for Borders, T for Top
Add Or Remove Bottom Border
This Excel Shortcut adds or removes the Bottom Border.
PC Shorcut:ALT>H>B>B
Mac Shorcut:⌘+⌥+↓
Remember This Shortcut:
Alt is the command to activate the Ribbon shortcuts. H for Home, B for Borders, B for Bottom
Add Or Remove Right Border
This Excel Shortcut adds or removes the Right Border.
PC Shorcut:ALT>H>B>R
Mac Shorcut:⌘+⌥+→
Remember This Shortcut:
Alt is the command to activate the Ribbon shortcuts. H for Home, B for Borders, R for Right
Add Or Remove Left Border
This Excel Shortcut adds or removes the Left Border.
PC Shorcut:ALT>H>B>L
Mac Shorcut:⌘+⌥+←
Remember This Shortcut:
Alt is the command to activate the Ribbon shortcuts. H for Home, B for Borders, L for Left
Transcript
Borders build directly on Excel’s grid system. They are one of the best ways to visually organize content in Excel, or to call attention to certain information.
Let’s take a look.
Before you apply borders, you may want to turn off the gridlines that appear by default in Excel. This will make it easier to see the borders you create. You can turn off gridlines by unchecking Gridlines on the Layout tab of the ribbon.
To apply a border, first select the cells you’d like to add borders to. Then, open the Format Cells dialog box and navigate to the Border tab. Applying a border is a three-step process.
First, select the line style that you’d like to use for the border. Excel provides a number of different line styles and weights.
Second, select the color that you’d like to use for your border.
Third, select the location of the border. You have the option to add a border to the top, bottom, left, and right of the current selection, and also the option to add a border between rows and columns. Finally, you can add lines that run diagonally across cells.
To apply the border, you can either click the buttons for each option, or click directly in the border preview area. In each case, click once to enable the border, and click again to disable the border.
The Border tab also contains border presets. These are shortcuts to quickly add more than one border setting at a time.
The None preset will clear all borders in one click. Use this option to reset borders before adding new ones.
The Outline preset places a border around the outside edge of currently selected cells.
The Inside preset adds borders between cells, both horizontally and vertically.
Note that each border you apply uses the current line and style selection. This makes it possible to apply different kinds of borders to the same cells. For example, by switching the line style and weight, we could add a heavy gray border around all cells and a thin gray dotted border between all cells.
If the regular black borders are not doing it for you and your organization senses are screaming for order, color sorting will do what nothing else can. Many a time it may not be practical to change the font color. While color fill is another good sorting friend, this tutorial is all about changing border colors.
Why switch out of black borders? You could be conforming to a format (all receipts ink in blue), color-coding columns, or maybe your fancy rainbow streak is on. Today you will learn how to change border colors using your cursor like a digital color pencil, using some quick keys and Format Cells, and even changing the default border color. All that sits right below, so let’s start digging.
Change Border Color From Ribbon
The easiest approach on the Excel horizon is the ribbon with its all-encompassing menu. The little border icon will instantly tell you where to look. Let’s find out what lies there.
- The Font section in the Home tab has a small border icon with a little arrow for a drop-down menu; click it.
- From the drop-down menu, hover on to Line Color and click on your choice of border color.
- Once chosen, you will notice the cursor has changed to a pencil icon.
- Click on the borders to change their color.
- Press the Esc key to return to the original cursor. The border pen can be used as a pen and not just as a color-changing tool.
- To add new borders, click on the gridlines where you want to add borders.
- Clicking and dragging will add a square border.
- Clicking and dragging across a cell can add a square border and with a bit of corner-to-corner angling, you can add a diagonal border across a cell.
Handling borders from the ribbon is a very open option as you quickly get to switch between colors, border styles and add or erase borders in a matter of a few clicks, not to mention the ease of access.
This was the mouse-savvy way of changing border colors from the ribbon. The keyboard-savvy way is in the segment below.
Change Border Color Using Format Cells Dialog
Borders come under the band of cell formatting and so we can use the Format Cells options to change border colors. Here’s how to arrive at the border settings using the Format Cells dialog:
- Select the cells with the borders requiring color change.
- Press Ctrl + 1 to launch the Format Cells dialog box or click the arrow with the border icon in the Home tab’s Font Select More Borders… from the menu.
- In the Border tab, pick the color of choice from the Color menu and the style (if need be) from the Style section
- Use the Border buttons surrounding the sample field to enter the borders.
- For each change in color and/or style, you will need to choose from the respective menus and add them using the Border buttons.
- Click OK when done.
As you can see, ease of access for our case is a bit hindered by this option, having to make separate selections for separate border styles every time.
However, for dealing with a repetitive border or a large number of cells, Format Cells would fare well with all the options open in display in one window.
Change Border Color Using Keyboard Shortcut
The shortcut keys for changing the cell border color are:
Alt, H, B, I
Enter the keys one after the other, not together.
Alt displays the shortcut keys for the ribbon tabs.
H selects the Home tab.
B opens the border menu.
I selects Line Color from the menu.
This is how to apply this keyboard shortcut to change border color:
- Press the keys Alt, H, B, I one after the other.
- Select the color of choice from the Line Color
- Once the color is selected, the cursor will change to a pencil icon which will be your border pen until you press the Esc key.
- Click on the borders to change their color.
- Select the style of the border from the border menu, if need be.
Recommended Reading: How to Rotate Text in Excel
Change the Default Border Color
Let’s say you’re not floating well with having to change the border color to the same color every time! With a bit of background tweaking, you can have your go-to border color set to default. One method is to hack the color of the gridlines forcing border colors to follow suit. The other is to set a Table Style. Let’s look into them.
Change the Gridlines Color
When you change the color of the gridlines, the default color of the borders (which is black) changes to the same color as the gridlines but a darker tone. Hence, the color you choose for the gridlines should be lighter than the default color you want to set for the borders. Find the steps for this below:
- Go to the File tab on the worksheet.
- Select Options from the left pane.
- Select Advanced from the left panel of the Excel Options
- Scroll down to the Display options for this worksheet: section and select the color for the gridlines (a shade lighter than the intended default border color).
- Click OK.
The color of the gridlines will be changed now:
When you add a border, by default it will be a darker shade than the color of the gridlines:
Set a Custom Table Style
Setting a custom table style can have your borders come out the same way every time you select them from Table Styles. Follow these steps to set up a custom table format:
- Select the dataset to be made into a table.
- From the Home tab, in the Styles group, click on the Format as Table
- Select New Table Style… from its menu.
- In the New Table Style dialog box, select:
- Whole Table from the Table Element list
- the Set as default table style for this document checkbox
- the Format button to open the Format Cells dialog box.
- Set the border colors and border styles of preference.
- Then click OK on both windows.
- Now select the custom style from the Home tab > Styles group > Format as Table
- A pop-up will appear to confirm the table selection.
- Check the My table has headers checkbox if the selected dataset has headers.
- Click OK.
The borders will appear in the set color and style:
This method is quite handy for bordering tables and tabular data. You may even choose a preset style.
Let’s wind up things up now. This tutorial showed you a few options to change the cell border color in Excel. The Excel ribbon serves as a very free-hand option for quick borders in multiple colors and styles. The other options are helpful for repeating tasks and set ways. There’s a shoe for every fit! We’re working on more shoes and will be quick for the fitting, your Excel case very much like our Cinderella!