While Google Sheets provides faint grey gridlines to help you align your data while working, those gridlines don’t always print well, and they don’t help emphasize important information. Adding solid borders to your cells is the best way to turn a messy wall of numbers into a professional, easily readable table. Borders help separate header rows from data, highlight “Total” columns, and make your spreadsheet look polished.
How to Add Basic Borders
Applying a border takes only a few clicks using the toolbar.
- Open your Google Sheets document.
- Click and drag your mouse to highlight the specific cells, rows, or columns where you want the borders to appear. (You can highlight a single cell, or a massive block of data).
- Look at the toolbar at the top of the screen (where the font and color options are). Locate the Borders icon. It looks like a small square divided into four smaller squares (like a window pane).
- Click the Borders icon. A drop-down menu will appear showing various border styles.
- Select the type of border you want:
- All borders (the first option): Draws a solid line around every single cell you highlighted. This is the most common choice for creating a standard table.
- Inner borders: Draws lines between the cells, but leaves the outside perimeter blank.
- Outer borders: Draws a thick box around the outside edge of your highlighted area, but leaves the inside cells untouched.
- Specific sides: You can choose to add a line only to the Left, Right, Top, or Bottom of the highlighted area.
- Click your desired option, and the borders will instantly apply to your cells.
How to Change Border Color and Thickness
By default, Google Sheets applies a thin, black border. However, you can customize the lines to match your company branding or simply make the headers stand out more.
- Highlight the cells you want to modify.
- Click the Borders icon in the toolbar.
- Look at the far right side of the drop-down menu. You will see two customization buttons:
- Border color (the pencil icon): Click this to open a color palette. You can select red to highlight negative financial data, or blue to match a corporate logo.
- Border style (the dashed lines icon): Click this to change the physical appearance of the line. You can choose a thicker solid line, a double line, a dashed line, or a dotted line.
- Crucial Step: Selecting a color or style does not automatically apply it. Once you select the new color and style, you must then click one of the border placement buttons (e.g., “All borders” or “Outer borders”) from the left side of the menu to actually draw the new lines onto your spreadsheet.
How to Remove Borders
If you made a mistake or want to redesign your table, clearing the borders is just as easy as applying them.
- Highlight the cells that currently have the unwanted borders.
- Click the Borders icon in the toolbar.
- Look for the icon that shows a square made of faint, dotted grey lines (it is usually the last option in the grid). This is the Clear borders button.
- Click it, and all custom lines will vanish, returning the cells to their default, borderless state.