Cell borders

What it is

Lines along the edges of cells: outline a table, separate the header, underline a total. The Borders button is on the panel above the spreadsheet, and the Borders submenu is in the right-click menu. Borders are visible to all co-authors, are printed, and carry over to Google Sheets and Excel when copied and exported.

How to use it

1. Select cells: a range, a merged cell, whole rows or columns, or the whole sheet.
2. Click Borders. On the right, choose Border color and Line style: Thin, Medium, Thick, Dashed, Dotted or Double. The choice is remembered until the page is reloaded, and it is shared by the panel and the menu.
3. Click an option: All borders, Inner, Horizontal, Vertical, External, Top, Bottom, Left, Right or Without borders. Choose the colour and style first, then the option. This way the inner lines can have one style and the outer ones another. One click is undone with one undo.
4. To remove a frame, use Without borders (or Remove borders in the Border color menu), or press Alt+Shift+6. To set all borders at once, press Alt+Shift+7.
5. Without borders removes all lines of the selection, including the lines shared with neighbours: a line that lies on a shared border disappears from the neighbouring cell too.
6. Merged cell. A selection that touches a merge expands to the whole merge, and the frame goes along its edge. If you put a border on a cell next to a merge, the line appears only along that cell, not along the whole side of the merge.
7. Whole rows and columns. Inner, Horizontal and Vertical on whole columns, or on full-width rows, do not draw a line along the edge of the sheet; a line that was already there stays. Without borders on one cell inside an outlined column removes the lines of that cell only (and the lines shared with its neighbours); the rest of the column stays framed.
8. Moving a block with the mouse beyond the edge of the selection takes the frame along with the block.
9. Copying. Borders come along with the cells from Google Sheets, Excel and other spreadsheets. Line thickness gives Thin, Medium or Thick; dashed, dotted and double lines are kept; the frame of a merged cell lies along its edge. Borders go out the same way in the other direction. Special insert → Everything except borders pastes without frames. Transpose turns the frame together with the cells: the bottom line becomes the right one, and the right one becomes the bottom.
10. Print and PDF prints the borders as they are on the screen; for a merged cell, too, along its edge.

Limits

• On a shared border of two cells, one line is visible: the bottom line of the upper cell (the right line of the left cell). If there is none, the top line of the lower cell (the left line of the right cell) is shown.
• A thin line, a dashed line and a dotted line lie on the grid line. At the top and left edges of the sheet, and just after frozen rows and columns, they are drawn inside the cell, so that the headers do not cover them. Medium, thick and double lines are drawn entirely inside their cell. A double line is two thin lines with a gap between them; where two double sides meet, the inner lines join at the corner.
• The freeze boundary is marked with a dark line. If your border is on it, under the last frozen row or to the right of the last frozen column, the border is visible in its own colour and thickness. The dark line stays where there is no border, and at the row numbers and column letters.
• Merge cells does not change borders. Lines inside a merged cell are not visible, but they are kept: if All borders or Inner was applied to a merge, the inner lines appear after Unmerge.
• When copying to Google Sheets and Excel, a merged cell has one line on each side. If a side on the screen is made of different segments, the thickest one is taken.
• In print, a shared border is the same line as on the screen.
• Conditional formatting does not change borders.
• The DUOSHAO agent applies the same options with a thin line of the needed colour.

If something goes wrong

What you see on the screen	Why	What to do
After Without borders, a line disappeared from the neighbouring cell	A shared border is one line for two cells, and Without borders removes it for both	Select the neighbour and set the needed side again
A side of a merge is outlined only partly	Borders were applied to the cells next to the merge, not to the merge itself	Select the merged cell and choose External
After Unmerge, lines appeared inside	Borders were applied to the merge with All borders or Inner	Select the range, choose Without borders, then External
Pasted cells arrived without borders	The paste was Values only or Everything except borders	Paste with a normal paste, or with Formats only