Gridlines can be extra confusing at times, especially when you’re using lots of images on your spreadsheet. For pure table work, they’re fine, but that doesn’t mean that your entire worksheet needs to be one big table of individual cells. You can hide gridlines or use them selectively to your advantage, even in Google Sheets.
Remove Gridlines from the Browser
If you’re using Google Sheets in your browser, removing gridlines is really not hard. However, it’s a bit different from how you would do it in Excel. So, it’s understandable if you’re having a hard time with it if you’re a newbie to Google Sheets.
Go to the View menu.
Unselect the Gridlines option.
Remove Gridlines from the App
If you’re not using the browser, here’s how you can remove gridlines from the Google Sheets app:
Select a tab. Tap on the down arrow next to the tab’s name.
Scroll all the way down until you find the Gridlines option.
Untoggle the option to remove the gridlines.
Gridlines Still There When Printing
Here’s the thing. Although Google Sheets understands that gridlines can be distracting when working on a spreadsheet, it doesn’t hide them forever. If you use the previous two methods to hide them, your printed spreadsheet will still have gridlines. So, you need to remove this option from the print formatting options too.
Go to the File tab.
Select the Print option.
Check the option No Gridlines from the print dialog window.
Alternatively, uncheck the Show Gridlines option from under the Formatting tab.
Tap or click ‘Next’ to print your spreadsheet.
You can do this whether you work with gridlines on or off. If they don’t bother you, leave them on. Then just use the print dialog window to remove them in the printed version.
Selective Gridlines
Understand that Google Sheets lets you customize like crazy. Therefore, just as you can remove gridlines from an entire spreadsheet, you can also add gridlines to select parts of your sheet.
This can be very useful if you want to have gridlines to better highlight dates or timestamps. You can also use it to further accentuate tables but still make it so that other areas of the spreadsheet have free-flowing text on them.
Obviously, selective gridlines can also help you use charts and tables on the same worksheet. It’s not always just about preference. Sometimes gridlines can be very helpful. It’s up to you to try different things until you find something visually appealing and highly relevant for your data.
To add gridlines to specific areas, not the whole worksheet, you first have to disable gridlines completely. You know how to do that now. Afterward, you can select a range of cells and apply a specific border to them from the Border/Gridlines button in the toolbar.
What Do You Prefer?
In terms of customization, it’s clear that Google Sheets is much more than meets the eye. Even something as generic as table gridlines can be used in many different ways. Sometimes to your advantage, sometimes to your detriment. Now that you know how to manipulate gridlines with ease, it’s time to create better-looking spreadsheets for your employees, coworkers, and clients.