How to apply a border to cells in Excel

Abstract

Borders build directly on Excel’s grid system.

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 could turn off gridlines by unchecking Gridlines on the Layout tab of the ribbon.

To apply a border, first snag the cells you’d like to add borders to.

Then, fire up the Format Cells dialog box and navigate to the Border tab.

Applying a border is a three-step process.

First, snag the line style that you’d like to use for the border.

Excel provides a number of different line styles and weights.

Second, grab the color that you’d like to use for your border.

Third, go for the location of the border.

Finally, you might add lines that run diagonally across cells.

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.