There may be times when you wish you could erase the cell borders and not show the horizontal and vertical lines on part of the spreadsheet while still showing those same lines on the rest of the spreadsheet. Probably the reasons for needing to do this are more aesthetic than functional...but it's your spreadsheet and you want it to look the way you want. That's reason enough! Let's see one way to make it happen.
An example of how you can appear to "erase" some cell borders is given here.
In
this example, the vertical borders are missing on row 1 and 2. The horizontal
line between row 1 and row 2 is missing.
There is a block in the middle where the horizontal and vertical lines are missing.
Let's see how to make it happen.
First, you select a block of cells where you want the horizontal and vertical lines to disappear. (Click and drag)
The selection could be cells on a single row or a single column. It just depends on where the lines should be "erased."
Now
you would select the Merge and Center button on the button
panel.
This will cause the spreadsheet to collapse all of the cells in the selected block into one cell. There are no cell borders inside a single cell, so the effect is to "erase" lines.
The results are shown below.
Note that Excel considers the resulting cell as Cell B3. Also note the "button tip" of Merge and Center.
Once a block of cells are merged, you have to be able to put everything back like it was if you change your mind. The path to "un-merge" requires just a slight bit more effort than the single click used to merge, but not much more.
First you would select the block of cells that have been merged. Then from the Menu, Select Format + Cells.
This will bring up the Format Cells wizard that lets you format cells in any number of ways.
We
will select the Alignment tab at the top if it is not already
selected.
At the bottom of the Alignment wizard you will see a checkmark beside the Merge cells block.
You would uncheck this block and click on OK.
This should return your "merged" cells to their former condition.
You may have noticed some other formatting options viewable from the Alignment tab. Great! Many of these features will be covered in some of the other formatting tutorials.
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