Grid lines in Microsoft Excel give you the view of the cell that you see on each worksheet. They are the faint lines that make up your sheet. But in certain cases, those grids can be distracting or just not helpful. Luckily you can hide grid lines in Excel whenever you want. And you can hide or show them by sheet, not by book.
In addition to hiding or showing the grid lines, you can have a preference when printing. You may use your own borders and don’t need to print the grids. Or maybe you have the opposite situation, where you don’t have cell borders and grid lines are helpful.
Whatever your situation, we will show you how to work with the grids in Excel to show, hide, print or not print.
Hide or show grid lines in Excel
In Excel on Windows and Mac, you have two ways to hide or show the grid lines for a sheet. These methods just reside on different tabs in Excel.
- Go to the tab Watch and to the Show section. Uncheck the box next to Grid lines to hide them or leave it checked to show them.
- Go to the tab Page design and to the Sheet Options section. Uncheck the box next to Watch under Gridlines to hide them or check the box to show them.
Whichever location you use to hide or show your grids, it will sync with each other.
Grid lines in Excel for the web
If you use the Excel online version, just go to an easy area to hide or show the grid lines. Go to the tab Watch and uncheck to hide or check to show the Grid Lines.
And again, the Gridlines settings apply to your current, active sheet, not all sheets in the workbook.
Print grid lines in Excel
On both Windows and Mac, you can choose whether or not to print the grid lines. Go to the tab Page design and check the box next to To print below the grids to print them or uncheck that box to hide them when printing.
To preview your sheet before printing, go to File> Print on any platform. This allows you to review before pressing the Print button.
Also, the grid line print settings only apply to the current active sheet. This is important to remember if you plan to print your other sheets and want a mix of some with grids and some without.
Note: Currently you cannot print grids in Excel for the web. So if you need to create a grid to print your data, consider adding borders to your cells.
Use grids when you need them
Whether the grids are distracting in one of your spreadsheets or you want to make sure you print them when necessary, you have ways to hide, show, and print the grids in Excel. This flexibility allows you to customize the look of your sheet, either on the computer or on the printed part.
