Microsoft Excel is a very powerful and customizable program that can take some time to get used to. When creating a spreadsheet for a presentation or any other purpose, you may want to get rid of the dotted lines separating cells. Fortunately, making this change is very easy to do and only requires a few simple steps.
Here’s how to handle dotted lines in Excel and some other helpful tips as a bonus.
How to remove dotted cell borders in Excel
Removing dashed cell borders does not necessarily mean removing them completely. It could mean changing the borders by adding a different style.
- To get started, select the Home tab in Excel, located at the top of the screen.
- Click on the Borders drop-down menu to reveal a list of border options for the selected cell or a range of cells. If the currently selected borders are dotted lines, simply change the border options to a desired option or turn off borders completely.
Delete piding lines from spreadsheets in Excel
Excel displays grid lines by default. These are the faint lines that show the borders around inpidual cells or within merged cells. They may not display as dotted lines in newer versions of Microsoft Excel, but they can still be annoying.
Unlike borders, which can be customized for any cell, these lines affect the entire spreadsheet. If you’re looking to present your data in print, you don’t really need to worry about grid lines, because these don’t appear in print, while cell borders do. However, if you want to give a virtual presentation, you may want to remove the grid lines.
- To do this, select the View tab at the top and then uncheck the box next to Grid lines.
Delete a page break in Excel
The strange dotted lines can also be caused by a page break. When you have formatted your spreadsheet for printing, page breaks are displayed as lines. In newer versions of Excel, manually added page breaks are displayed as solid lines, while automatic page breaks are displayed as dotted lines.
- To remove these dotted lines, select a cell in a row immediately following the main page break.
- Tap on Page design tab at the top, select Breaks in it Page Settings section and click Remove page break.
This is how to remove solid horizontal lines in normal viewhowever, the automatically generated dotted lines will still be there.
- Delete them by selecting the Archive tab at the top of the screen.
- Then navigate to Optionslocated in the menu on the left.
- Click Advanced and scroll down to Display options for this worksheet.
- Uncheck the box next to Show page breaks option.
Contact Microsoft Support
Most of the time, trying to fix an Excel problem on your own will waste a lot of time. In fact, sometimes the problem is even more complex than you think, and that’s exactly why Excel technical support is available 24/7.
If you’re having trouble fixing the dotted lines in your spreadsheet and the methods above don’t work, contact support and let them take care of it.
Final thoughts
Microsoft Excel is an excellent and powerful tool and has a variety of practical uses. However, some problems can be difficult to fix, such as getting rid of dotted lines. Following the methods above should fix your problem and if not, Microsoft support is available around the clock to help you.
