How to Print Gridlines in Excel: Troubleshooting Guide

Are you struggling to Print Gridlines In Excel? It’s a common frustration when what you see on your screen doesn’t translate to your printed document. While gridlines are essential for data organization and readability within Excel, they sometimes mysteriously disappear when you hit print. This guide aims to provide you with a range of solutions to ensure those crucial gridlines appear in your printed spreadsheets. Whether you’re using a recent version of Excel or an older one, and regardless of your printer type, we’ll explore practical steps and workarounds to tackle this issue effectively.

Quick Checks and Simple Solutions

Before diving into more complex fixes, let’s address some of the most common and easily rectifiable causes for gridlines not printing in Excel. Often, the solution is just a few clicks away within Excel’s settings.

Ensure Gridlines are Enabled in Page Setup

The most straightforward reason for missing gridlines is that they might not be enabled in your page setup options. Here’s how to check and enable them:

1. Go to the Page Layout tab in your Excel ribbon.
2. In the Sheet Options group, look for the Gridlines section.
3. Ensure that the Print checkbox under Gridlines is checked.

Alt Text: Screenshot of Excel’s Page Layout tab, highlighting the Sheet Options group with the Gridlines Print checkbox selected.

If this checkbox isn’t selected, Excel will not print the gridlines, regardless of whether they are visible on your screen. Ticking this box is often the quickest solution to the problem.

Adjust Print Quality Settings

In some instances, particularly with certain printers, the print quality setting can affect whether gridlines are printed. Some users have found that switching to “Best” print quality mode resolves the issue. While this might consume more ink and print slower, it’s a useful troubleshooting step:

1. Open the Print dialog box (Ctrl + P).
2. Look for Printer Properties or Preferences (the exact wording may vary depending on your printer driver).
3. Navigate to the Quality or Paper/Quality tab.
4. Change the print quality to Best or High.
5. Try printing again to see if gridlines now appear.

This workaround, while not ideal for everyday printing due to ink consumption, can help identify if the print quality setting is the root cause of your missing gridlines.

Experiment with Scaling

Another quick fix that has worked for some users involves slightly adjusting the scaling of the worksheet. A minor change in scale can sometimes trigger the gridlines to print correctly:

1. Go to the Page Layout tab.
2. In the Scale to Fit group, find the Scale dropdown.
3. If it’s set to 100%, try changing it to 99% or another slightly different percentage.
4. Print your sheet to check if gridlines are now visible.

This minor adjustment is often enough to circumvent printing glitches related to gridlines.

Workarounds Involving Borders

If the simple solutions above don’t work, you can utilize Excel’s border features as a workaround to effectively create printable gridlines. This method ensures that lines are always printed, as you are essentially replacing the default gridlines with explicit borders.

Applying Border Styles

Instead of relying on default gridlines, you can apply border styles to the cells you want to outline. This gives you more control over the appearance of the lines and ensures they are printed:

1. Select the range of cells where you need gridlines.
2. Right-click on the selected cells and choose Format Cells.
3. Go to the Border tab.
4. Choose a line style and color.
5. Click the Outline and Inside presets to apply borders to all cell boundaries within your selection.
6. Click OK and print your sheet.

Alt Text: Screenshot of the Format Cells dialog box in Excel, highlighting the Border tab with options for line style, color, and presets for Outline and Inside borders.

By applying borders in this way, you are creating definite lines that Excel will reliably print, regardless of any issues with default gridline printing.

Using Page Borders as a Last Resort

For situations where you need gridlines to delineate page boundaries, particularly when a spreadsheet spans multiple pages, you can create page borders. This is more of a manual workaround but can be effective:

1. Determine your page breaks and identify the cells that fall on the page boundaries.
2. Apply borders (as described in the previous method) to the cells along these page boundaries.
3. This will visually define the page limits with printed lines.

This method is especially useful for draft mode printing where default gridlines might be intentionally suppressed for speed and ink saving, but you still need to see page divisions.

Addressing Issues with Older .xls Files

An older forum thread suggests a specific problem related to Excel files saved in the older .xls format. If you are working with a workbook originally created as a .xls file, and are experiencing gridline printing problems, the issue might be related to “Print_Titles” settings within these older files.

Recreating the Sheet in a New Workbook

The suggested solution involves creating a new workbook and moving your sheet into it. This process can resolve corruption or compatibility issues that may be causing gridlines not to print:

1. Open the problematic .xls workbook in Excel.
2. Right-click on the sheet tab you are having trouble with.
3. Select Move or Copy….
4. In the “Move or Copy” dialog box, under “To book:”, choose (new book).
5. Ensure the Create a copy checkbox is checked if you want to keep the original sheet in the old workbook as well.
6. Click OK.
7. A new Excel workbook will open with your sheet.
8. Save this new workbook in the current .xlsx format to avoid potential compatibility issues in the future.
9. Try printing from this new workbook.

This process effectively cleans up potential file-level issues and often resolves gridline printing problems associated with older Excel formats.

Conclusion

Printing gridlines in Excel should be a straightforward task, but when issues arise, it can be surprisingly frustrating. By systematically working through these troubleshooting steps, from simple setting checks to more involved workarounds like using borders or recreating sheets, you should be able to regain control over your printed output. Remember to start with the simplest solutions first and progressively move to more complex ones. In most cases, one of these methods will successfully bring back your missing Excel gridlines.