How to Add Cell Borders in Excel (3 Easy Ways) |
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How to Add Cell Borders in Excel?
by Steve Scott
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. Table of Contents Toggle How to Add Cell Borders in ExcelSay 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.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 BoxAnother 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: There are a number of ways to open the Format Cells Dialog box: You can open it by selecting the ‘More Borders’ option from the border button’s dropdown menu.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 presetFinally, 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: 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.Here is what our dataset looks like after drawing borders above and below the grand total: 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 ExcelSteve Scott I am a huge fan of Microsoft Excel and love sharing my knowledge through articles and tutorials. I work as a business analyst and use Microsoft Excel extensively in my daily tasks. My aim is to help you unleash the full potential of Excel and become a data-slaying wizard yourself. |
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