How to use a border to discern groups in Microsoft Excel

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How to use a border to discern groups in Microsoft Excel – Guide

Excel spreadsheets are sometimes difficult to read due to dense information and complex structure. Adding a border around cells can help you distinguish different sections, highlight certain data like column headings or outlines, and make your worksheets clearer and more attractive. A border is a line around a cell or block of cells in Excel. Typically, cell borders are used to highlight and emphasize a specific section of a worksheet. For example, you can insert a border to draw viewers’ attention to totals or other important data in the spreadsheet.

Please do not confuse cell borders with spreadsheet gridlines. The edges are more visible and prominent. Unlike gridlines, cell borders do not appear by default on a worksheet; you must enter them manually. When you print a document, borders appear on the printed pages whether you print gridlines or not. Microsoft Excel provides several ways to add a border around a single cell or a range of cells.

How to use a border to discern groups in Microsoft Excel

How to convert excel data to a table object

The easiest way to make Excel data more readable is to convert the data into a table object. To create an Excel table object, click anywhere in the data and press Ctrl + T. In the dialog box that appears, verify that the range is correct and check or uncheck My table has titles as appropriate. You don’t have to rely on standard formatting. You can quickly reformat the entire Excel worksheet in two ways.

At the Home tab, click the Format as Table drop-down list in the Styles group, and select any of the styles from the resulting drop-down list.

On the Table Design contextual tab, choose any of the styles in the Table Styles group. Offers are the same on both options.

The fact that you can make this change quickly is enough; we will not assign a new style at this time. What none of these styles offer is a way to distinguish groups.

How to display a conditional row in an excel sheet

When you have a large spreadsheet with dozens of rows and several different groups of data, not only are the groups harder to distinguish, but errors are almost certain. A quick fix is ​​to apply an Excel conditional formatting rule that displays a red line between groups of data. You can choose to display this red line along the top or bottom edge of the cells. If you choose Bottom Margin, you will get a row at the bottom of the table, which you might not want.

If the table shows a “Total” row at the bottom, the red border will replace the double row between the data and the “Total” row. I will show you how to apply the rule for the top margin and mention the instructions for the bottom margin if they are different. You must sort Excel data by the group column for this conditional format to work. With any other sort parameter, the rows are meaningless and make the spreadsheet cluttered. Therefore, this technique is best for data that is not frequently sorted. Now let’s add the red border line.

Select the dataset, but do not include the header row (B3:F13).

At the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting in the Styles group, and select New Rule from the drop-down menu.

In the resulting dialog box, choose Use a formula to determine which cells to format in the top pane.

In the bottom pane, enter the following formula: =$B2$B3

You want to reference the header cell. This is what makes it possible to display the border along the top of cells. Type =$B3$B4 if you prefer the border at the bottom. The $ character is mandatory: if you omit it, the rule will not work as expected.

Click Format.

Click on the Edge tab.

Select the solid linetype at the bottom of the Style list. Unfortunately, you cannot change the thickness of the line.

Choose red from the Color drop-down list.

In the Edge Swatch box, click the top row. If you want the bottom border, click on it in the swatch box.

Click OK twice to return to the worksheet.

You can change the color and style of the frame, but as mentioned earlier, you cannot increase the weight. Remember to sort when adding new records or changing data for an existing record.

Final note

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