By default, your Excel worksheet has gridlines in each file. However, sometimes you don’t need those gridlines to be shown in the final document. That’s why you have to permanently remove or hide them from the Excel file. Most of the time, people don’t know how to hide gridlines in Excel, and they tend to explore the tricks and watch multiple tutorials. Or sometimes you need hidden gridlines to be visible in an Excel spreadsheet.
To make your spreadsheet accurate and presentable, you have to hide gridlines because sometimes it does not look good while printing.
What do You Know about Gridlines?
You have to consider a few things while working on a spreadsheet:
- Excel automatically shows the gridlines in a worksheet and the color is selected by default. You can change the color of gridlines whatever you may like. For this, you have to click on the Gridline color given under the Display options for this worksheet. File > Options > Advanced
- Most of the time, people tend to get confused between gridlines and borders in Excel. You cannot make changes in the gridlines just the way you can do with borders.
- Gridlines of the cells filled with any color will not become visible in the printing. If you want to display those cells’ gridlines, you have to remove the fill color. For this, choose the cells, and click the arrow right after the Fill Color given on the Home tab menu and Font group.
- Try to remove the fill color thoroughly. The gridlines will not appear if the fill color is changed to white. If you want to keep applying the white color besides displaying gridlines, you must use borders rather than gridlines.
- Remember that gridlines always appear on the entire worksheet. If you want to apply gridlines on a particular cell range, you have to apply different operations for this function.
Importance of Gridlines
With gridlines, you can make a distinction between cell borders given in the spreadsheet. You can have a visual tracing while getting objects and images align in the workbook. Furthermore, the gridlines give more accuracy, presentation, and readability to the tables or charts.
How to Hide Gridlines in Excel
Below you will find some useful methods that will help you in hiding the gridlines in Excel:
How to Hide Gridlines with the Option in the Ribbon
In Excel, you will find a built-in option to execute this function.
For Excel 2007 and Later
- On the Excel Ribbon, go to the “View” tab.
- Uncheck the “Gridlines” checkbox and you will not see the grid bars because they are hidden.
- Or else, you may hide the gridlines from “Page layout” and uncheck the Gridlines “View” option.
For Excel 2003 and Earlier
- Go to the “Tools” and then “Options”.
- A dialog box will appear. From this, open the “View” tab and uncheck the “Gridlines” option. Click OK.
- Once you click the OK button, all the gridlines will be hidden from the worksheet.
How to Hide Gridlines by Changing Background Color
If you change the background color, you can hide the gridlines easily. The color would be similar to the worksheet background so that you cannot see the gridlines. For this, you have to follow some quick steps:
- Choose all the rows and columns of your spreadsheet. Press CTRL + A and all the rows and columns will be selected. Or else, you can even click the icon given under the “Name box”.
- When all the cells are selected, click on the “Fill Color” option and choose the white color.
- Now, all the gridlines will get hidden.
How to Hide Gridlines in Excel with Shortcut Key
Using a shortcut key helps you in hiding the gridlines effortlessly. If you are a kind of shortcut key person you will have to follow the below-given steps:
Press “ALT + W + V + G” keys in combination and get the results.
How to Hide Gridlines in Excel with Visual Basic for Application (VBA)
In Excel, you will get an automatic programming code used for hiding gridlines.
You have to add the Developer tab first.
Add the Developer tab
Using the developer tab, you have to make and manage macros. Well, if you don’t find the tab you can enable it through the following steps.
- On the File menu, click on the Excel Options.
- Hit the Customize Ribbons option.
- Check the Developer ribbon.
- Press OK and add the Developer Tab on the spreadsheet.
Add the VBA module
In Excel, copy-pasting is so easy and you can directly copy the content from the web and paste it into the spreadsheet.
- Choose the “Developer Tab”.
- Select the “Visual Basic” option from the ribbon on the left side of the tab.
- Now, right-click on the VBAProject option with the workbook name.
- Choose “Insert” and then “Module” from the drop-down menu.
Now the Excel code is generated. You can type or even copy and paste it from any other source.
Limitations of Gridlines
- You cannot print the Gridlines while printing the Excel spreadsheet file.
- Gridlines are not too prominent that’s why people with eyesight issues will not be able to see those faint lines. Gridlines are not easy to customize.
How to Hide Gridlines in Excel only in Specific Cells
When you need to hide specific gridlines, you may use the white cells background or white borders can be applied. Let’s see how you can simply remove gridlines by coloring the borders.
- Choose the area from which you need to remove the lines.
- On the selected area right-click and choose Format Cells from the context menu.
- You can use the CTRL + 1 keyboard shortcut to show the Format Cells dialog. In the Format Cells window, ensure that you are on the Border tab. Press the Outline and Inside buttons given under the Presets option while choosing the white color.
- Click OK and save the changes.
Things to Consider While Removing Gridlines in Excel
- When you print an Excel workbook, you must use borders. Or else the gridlines will not appear.
- Your gridlines will remove when you put white color on the selected cell range.
- You can remove the gridlines while completing the work. That way, you can get rid of uncertainty to make the work advances.
