Print Gridlines in Excel

The borders around each cell in a spreadsheet are called gridlines. But they won’t appear automatically when you print the file. Let’s learn how to print gridlines in Microsoft Excel.

How to Print Gridlines in Excel

In Excel, it’s possible to show or hide gridlines as you edit your file. But this decision doesn’t directly impact the appearance of your printed spreadsheets. If you want to print gridlines so they’re visible on paper, you’ll have to make an additional adjustment.

Let’s say you have a file that you want to print, and you need gridlines on paper. This is a good option, because it makes your data easier to read. It gives rows and columns a table format that looks great.

Above the ribbon, click on the File dropdown in Excel. You’ll see a long list of options, including several involving printing. The options you need are under Page Setup. 

Click there, and the Page Setup menu will appear. Across the top, you’ll see four additional menu options: Page, Margins, Header/Footer, and Sheet. The option you need is under Sheet, so go ahead and click that option.

Now, you’ll see new lists of options. The important one here lies under the Print Options section. It’s the Gridlines checkbox, which defaults to unchecked. If you do want to print gridlines, click on the box to select it. Finally, press OK.

You can verify your choice by navigating to the main Print menu (also on the File dropdown) and looking in the print preview window. As you can see in this example, the small page preview has gridlines included. This really helps make printed data more readable and easy to analyze.

As you can see, it’s easy to print gridlines in Microsoft Excel. It just takes a few simple clicks, and in no time you’ll be printing concise, clear, and readable spreadsheets to share.