Vertical gridlines in sheets not showing in Excel 2010

Hi Folks,

Until now I've only posted VBA problems, but this time I have a very weird general Excel problem.
My boss recently got a new PC and since then the vertical gridlines in Excel sheets aren't visible anymore. It doesn't matter if he simply opens Excel with a new blank worksheet or opens a random previously made worksheet. In all situations, only the horizontal gridlines are visible.

We're pretty certain it's a PC-specific problem, because when he logs in on a different computer and a random worksheet, both the horizontal and vertical gridlines are visible. And when I log in on his computer and open a random worksheet, only the horizontal gridlines show.

Changing the gridline colour in the Excel options works for the Excel sheet which is open at that moment. But for some reason, this setting is not changed permanently: As soon as he closes and re-opens Excel, the vertical gridlines are once again not visible.
We already tried to re-install Office 2010, but that didn't solve the problem.

The people from our helpdesk also tried re-installing Office (since we ourselves, of course, are too stupid to know how to do that properly ) and, no surprise, that also didn't work.
The only other solution they can come up with, is to completely re-install the PC. Which would of course bring a lot of additional work such as making a full back-up of his PC, re-installing all kinds of additional software etc.

So, if anybody has a better solution than completely re-installing the PC, we would be very grateful.

Thanks in advance.
Thirsa

Thanks for the quick reply.

We only have network printers, so theoretically I would expect the drivers to be the same on all computers. But of course I'm willing to give it a try. However, what would I have to change? Do you expect I have to re-install the printer driver, or should it be some printer-setting which needs adjusting?

If it turns out to be the graphics card, I expect he'll just have to learn to live with this?

Thanks again. We'll try out both solutions (starting with the printer) and see if they help. I'll get back to you asap with the results.

Hi again.
We tried setting a different printer, updating the printer drivers and updating the driver for the graphics card, but unfortunately...still no vertical gridlines .

Try to change graphics card.

Wow, I'm gone for a few minutes and there's 3 replies. Cool. I really love the active participation in this forum.

A quick reply to all three of you.

#xlnitwit: Whe we start Excel in safe mode, we still have the same problem. I don't know it the PC was set up from an image or not....I'll have to check with the person responsible for setting it up. We did get another new PC at the same time as this one, so I would expect the hardware in those two to be the same. And the other one does not have this problem.

#Indi_Ra: Unfortunately, we don't have spare graphics cards lying around, so I can't try changing that on short notice. But we will of course keep it in mind if we don't find a different solution.

#Ankur Shukla: We do have 'show gridlines' checked, but that only results in the horizontal ones being visible. We tried unchecking and rechecking this, with not result at all. And changing the gridline colour in the advanced options (which is by default set to 'automatic') only solves the problem for the workbook which is open at that moment. But when a different workbook is opened, or when Excel is closed and restarted, we only see the horizontal gridlines again.

Ankur, you've solved the problem by asking for a picture. And it turns out it wasn't an Excel problem.
I asked my boss to make a screenshot of an open Excel workbook on his PC, so that I could upload it here. To my surprise, when I opened the picture on my PC, I saw both the horizontal and the vertical gridlines. So of course, we also tried the reverse and opened an Excel-screenshot from my PC on his PC. And in that case, the vertical gridlines were gone again.

So, it turns out that somehow the display settings of his monitor (which isn't new) weren't ideal for the new PC....problem solved by auto adjusting the display settings.

Thanks again to all of you for thinking along.

I know it is years later, but I've just spent hours searching to solve the identical problem. Thanks to Thirsa for asking and providing the solution. Resetting the display settings on my monitor also solved the problem for me. Thank you so much for a great forum.