My Excel 2004 spreadsheets don\'t have the default thin black border surrounding

Question

My Excel 2004 spreadsheets don't have the default thin black border surrounding the all the cells when printed in Excel 2011 for the Mac.

I discovered my Excel 2004 spreadsheets are not quite the same when printed out with my new Excel 2011 for Mac. I lost the nice thin black border that normally surrounds the outermost edges of all the cells on each printed page, even though the outside border was never set in Excel 2004 as a preference or setting of any kind. It's just the way Excel 2004 used to print out all the spreadsheets. Now I have a faint gray line at the edges of my outermost cells on every printed page. It is more faint than the gridlines, which makes it look like cells may be cut off or missing. I tried 2 different things:

1) I did a Copy/Paste of all the data from my Excel 2004 spreadsheet into a new Excel 2011 spreadsheet, and was able to obtain the nice black border around the outer edges by manually selecting the Outside Borders option. However the column widths did not transfer over exactly the same, in spite of doing a Paste Special for column widths. To clarify, the column widths imported as the same 10.00 width, but the actual measurement of the column width was narrower in Excel 2011 than the .94 inches the 10.00 width was in Excel 2004. As a result, I had to enlarge the Excel 2011 column widths to 11.67 to arrive at the same column width of .94 inches so the text in my headings would be completely visible. I then had to adjust all the remaining columns, which is just too much work to do when you have a ton of spreadsheets.

2) So I tried resaving my original Excel 2004 spreadsheet in Excel 2011.xlsx format, but that did not help with the border. No border appears around the outside edges of the cells; I have the same faint gray line. I tried selecting all the cells and using the Border Button to manually place a border around the outside edges, but in spite of selecting that option no border appears.

Note: I am able to get a border around the cells if I select all the cells that are one cell down from the top of the alphabetized column headings, and one cell in from the left of the numbered column rows, but that does not give me a border where I want it: Around the outside edges of all the cells that butt up against the column headings and column rows.

I would like to be able to get a nicee black border to print by default around all my cells when using my spreadsheets created in Excel# 2004. Is that impossible now since installing Office# 2011 or is there an easy way to do this? The outside border was there by default in Excel# 2004. It can be done manually when creating a new spreadsheet in Excel# 2011. It just does not work when printing a 2004 spreadsheet, or when trying to resave a 2004 spreadsheet in the 2011.xlsx format. Thank you!!!!.

Explanation / Answer

From the File menu choose Page Setup. In the Page Setup dialog click on the Sheet tab. In the Print section check the box for Gridlines In the Print section be sure Draft quality is not checked. Click the OK button to close the Page Setup dialog From the File menu choose Print Make sure the full Print dialog is displayed (click the downward triangle to make sure) Click the Copies and Pages button and choose Print Settings Find your printer's quality settings and make sure that high quality is selected. Then click the Print button.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse M
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.