Hiding Gridlines in a Table: MS Word

You may not realize it when you first insert a table, but MS Word includes some non-printing gridlines around the table. You can't normally see the gridlines because they are obscured by the border that Word formats tables with by default. The purpose of gridlines is to mark the boundaries of the table and each cell in the table when you have the table formatted for no border.

You have complete control over whether gridlines are displayed or not. To turn them off, you simply need to choose Hide Gridlines from the Table menu. When you later want them back on, choose the same option again.

The gridlines setting is not set on a per table basis. In other words, if you turn the gridlines off anywhere in a document (in or out of a table), it is turned off throughout the entire document.

Sometimes the borders that appear in a table by default are unneeded. You can remove all the borders by selecting the table and clicking the No Border button. When you remove all the borders, you can still see the table structure, if you want. Choose Table | Show Gridlines to see gray, nonprinting gridlines in the table. Print Preview shows that the gridlines will not appear when the document is printed.

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