Should You Show or Hide Gridlines in Excel?

Summary

• Excel's gridlines help with data readability by guiding your eyes and helping you to avoid confusion.
• Hiding gridlines in Excel can enhance aesthetics, allow readers to focus on data, and provide a realistic print preview.
• Choosing to show or hide gridlines depends on the context, content, readability, and intended use of your spreadsheet.

You may not have given Excel's gridlines a second thought, but there are reasons the program lets you choose whether you want to display them. Indeed, in some contexts, it can be beneficial to remove them altogether.

How to Show and Hide Gridlines in Excel

To show and hide an Excel worksheet's gridlines, check or uncheck the "Gridlines" checkbox in the Show group of the View tab on the ribbon.

You can also hide the gridlines in a certain section of your spreadsheet by color-filling the relevant cells in white (or another color of your choice). To do this, select the cells, and use the "Fill Color" drop-down option in the Font group of the Home tab.

Finally, you can change the color of your worksheet's gridlines. Press Alt > F > T to launch the Excel Options window, and select the "Advanced" option in the left-hand menu. Scroll to the Display Options For This Worksheet section, change the gridline color using the paint icon, and click "OK" when you're ready.

Why Showing Gridlines Is Beneficial

Excel's gridlines help you read across the rows and down the columns, which is especially useful if most of your data is in unformatted cells, rather than being presented in independently contained charts or formatted tables.

The faint lines serve as a guide for your eyes as you scan your data, meaning you can easily identify connected patterns and avoid inadvertently jumping between rows and columns. This is particularly handy when viewing a large spreadsheet on a wide screen.

Another way to improve readability in Excel is to activate Focus Cell, which highlights the whole row and column when a cell is selected. You can do this by clicking the "Focus Cell" drop-down menu in the Show group of the View tab on the ribbon.

In this example, because some of the cells do not contain data and the gridlines are turned off, reading across the rows becomes a challenge.

Some might argue that a suitable alternative to displaying gridlines is to format the data into a table through the Styles group of the Home tab, but this is more resource-intensive than having a plain spreadsheet of data. Also, using Excel's pre-defined table formatting limits the personalized touches you can add to their layout. You also can't use spilled arrays in formatted tables, another reason to avoid this approach.

Another alternative is to format the cells directly with borders and row colors. As with Excel's table-formatting tool, this option can significantly slow down a workbook's performance, and you'll use a lot more ink if you want to print your spreadsheet!

Displaying gridlines in Excel makes the spreadsheet easier to read, prevents you from needing to format your data, and is likely to keep your Excel workbook performing well.

Why Hiding Gridlines Is Beneficial

There are some circumstances when hiding the gridlines might be preferable.

In this example, because the charts are formatted with semi-transparent backgrounds, the gridlines only serve to confuse their readability.

Moreover, if you choose to take advantage of Excel's table-formatting tool, or manually apply colors to separate rows and columns, removing the gridlines helps with aesthetic presentation.

In other words, a plain spreadsheet background draws the reader's eyes to the thing that matters (the data), cleans up the unnecessary distraction of gridlines, and presents your spreadsheet more professionally.

The pros of hiding the gridlines don't stop there. Because gridlines don't print in Excel by default, hiding them from view on your screen means you'll get a more realistic preview of how the sheet will look on paper. As a result, you can make visual tweaks to the final product more confidently when you hide the gridlines.

Finally, if you decide to add faint borders to certain cells, it can be easy to confuse these with the spreadsheet's gridlines. So, hiding the gridlines makes it easier to distinguish between bordered and borderless cells.

Should You Show or Hide Gridlines in Excel?

Ultimately, there's no right or wrong answer. Indeed, it depends entirely on context—what are you using your spreadsheet for, and what does it contain?

However, the primary factor to consider is whether your worksheet is easy to read. When you've finished constructing your data, see how it looks with the gridlines option both enabled and disabled.

If your spreadsheets contain lots of self-contained charts and diagrams, you'll likely find them more readable and aesthetically pleasing with the gridlines hidden. On the other hand, if your data sits in unformatted rows and columns, the gridlines will be an indispensable part of your spreadsheet's layout, so leave them visible.

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Whether you show or hide your gridlines in Excel isn't the only thing you should consider when making your spreadsheet easy to read. For example, freezing header rows and columns, using consistent formatting, and using Excel's Notes tool to avoid too much text are just some of the other ways to make your spreadsheet look the part.

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