How to Add Borders in Excel? 3 Easy Ways

(Note: This guide on how to add borders in Excel is suitable for all Excel versions including Office 365)

Excel is one of the most popular data-handling applications. When working with large amounts of different data types, you might need to differentiate the data. To differentiate the data, Excel offers a variety of formatting options. One of the useful formatting options to differentiate, highlight, and showcase data is by using borders

In this article, I will tell you how to add borders in Excel in 3 easy ways. You’ll also learn how to remove the applied borders.

You’ll Learn:

What Are Borders in Excel?
How to Add Borders in Excel?
Remove the Cell Border

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What Are Borders in Excel?

Before we learn how to add borders in Excel, let us see what borders are in Excel.

Borders are a line around a cell or a group of cells in Excel. They are mainly used to highlight particular data among a group of data. By default, Excel does not have any borders and the cell circumference is the only differentiating factor. However, you can apply a variety of borders to your spreadsheet to differentiate the data in the cells.

Borders can also be used to create tables, and group similar data or sections in a worksheet together.

By default, Excel prints any borders applied to the worksheets. In case you don’t want the printed sheets to appear with the borders, you can choose to remove them.

How to Add Borders in Excel?

In Excel, you can add cell borders of different types and sizes depending on your preferences. You can either choose to add the built-in borders or choose the custom borders based on your choice.

Let us now see how to add borders in Excel worksheets in detail with an example. Consider an Excel worksheet that has the data of students in a particular class and the marks they scored in 5 subjects. Along with the marks, the table also houses the total and average marks scored by each student.

At first glance, the data looks all the same without any differentiation in the important data. To ascertain the data easily, let us add borders to the given data.

Apply Built-In Borders

You can easily select and add built-in borders in Excel with just a few clicks.

First, open the Excel worksheet and select a cell or a group of cells for which you want to apply the borders.

Navigate to Home. Under the Font section, you can find the Borders option which appears between the underline and highlight buttons.

You will find that the border button highlights the most recent border option you have used. When you want to use that particular border, you can just click on the border button.

If you want to explore and use a different border, click on the dropdown next to the borders button.

From the dropdown, you can find multiple options to apply borders and additional options to draw and customize them.

Note: When you apply cell borders to the cells, you will notice that the border is also applied to the adjacent cells. In case you have applied two different borders to the adjacent cells, the cell border of the recent selection is applied.

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Create and Apply a Custom Cell Border

Excel offers options to choose and apply any built-in cell borders. However, in some cases, you might want a different cell border of your choice. In those cases, you can customize a cell border and use it whenever needed.

To create a custom cell border, select the cells you want to apply the border.

Navigate to the Home main menu ribbon. Under the Styles section, click on the dropdown from Cell Styles and click on New Cell Style.

This opens the Styles dialog box. In the dialog box, name your style and select the areas where you want to apply the border. Then, click on the Format button.

Click on the Border tab. Choose the border line styles, presets, and colors.

Finally, click OK.

Again, click OK.

You can find the new cell border from the Home main menu, under the Cell Styles option. From the dropdown, click on the cell style you created under the Custom section.

Draw a Cell Border

There is another way to apply borders to cells in Excel. In this method, you can easily draw the borders over the cells.

To draw borders, first, choose the Line Style and the Line Color from the Borders dropdown in the Home main menu ribbon.

Then, click on the Draw Border or Draw Border Grid to enable the pencil icon. The Draw Border option draws the outline borders, whereas, the Draw Border Grid is used to draw the outer, as well as, inner borders.

Click and drag the mouse pointer over the cells to apply the borders.

Once the borders are drawn, click on Home and again click on the border button to disable the border pen.

Remove the Cell Border

Cell borders are a great addition to your presentation to highlight and showcase the data. However, some cases might not need a cell border. There are two ways to remove a cell border.

One way to remove a cell border is by clicking on the No Border option.

To remove the borders, first, select the cells with the borders.

Click on the Home main menu ribbon. Under the Borders dropdown, click on No Border.

This instantly removes the border from the selected cells.

Another way to remove the borders is by erasing them manually.

To erase the applied borders, click on the Home main menu. Under the Borders dropdown, click on the Erase Border option.

Once the eraser icon is enabled, you can click and drag on the cells to clear the borders.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How to add borders in Excel easily?

First, select the cells. Then, click on the Borders button or dropdown from the Home main menu ribbon to add borders to the selected cells.

How to remove borders in Excel?

To remove the added borders in Excel, first, select the cells with borders. Then navigate to Home main menu, click on the dropdown from Borders, and click on No Borders.

How do I customize the borders in Excel?

To add custom borders, first, select the cells. Then, click on the dropdown from Borders and select More Borders or right-click on the cells and select Format Cells. From the dialog box, click on the Border tab and customize them. You can also click on Home and create a custom cell style selecting the border of your preference.

Closing Thoughts

By adding borders to cells in Excel, you can highlight the particular information that can easily be ascertained by the reader without much effort. It can also be used to highlight any important data which signifies the consolidated result.

In this article, we saw how to add borders in Excel in 3 easy ways. We also saw how to customize the borders and remove them when not necessary.

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Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!

How to Add Borders in Excel? 3 Easy Ways

What Are Borders in Excel?