Let’s take a look. The border menu is on the home tab of the ribbon, inside the font group. It contains a long list of border presets. To use these presets, set the line style and the line color first. If you use these presets without setting the line style and line color, you’ll either get the last settings used, or Excel’s default settings. In this case, we’ll set the line color to Red, and the line style to a heavy line, to make the borders easy to see. Note that when you choose the line style or line color from the border menu, Excel automatically enables “draw border” mode. We aren’t drawing borders in this case, so we’ll need to turn that off. Now we have the standard cursor again and can apply border presets. The Bottom Border preset adds a border to the bottom of the selection. The Top Border, Left Border, and Right Border presets work the same way. The No Border command clears existing borders. It has no effect if there aren’t any borders in use. All Borders adds a border around all selected cells, while Outside Border only adds a border around the outside edge of the current selection. Thick Box Border also adds a border around the outside edge of the current selection, but note that it ignores the current line style setting and uses its own. Bottom Double Border and Thick Bottom Border presets also ignore the current line style setting. Both presets use their own settings for line style. This is also true of the three presets that apply a top and bottom border. Each preset respects the current line color setting and uses its own setting for line style.
Dave Bruns
Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.
