Placing borders around cells?

Is there something here I've misunderstood please? I've opened an old
spreadsheet I created years ago. Most of the cells have an outline
from the Border command, which is what I want. But I note that a few
rows do not have their cells outlined. So I select all of these and
use Format>Cells>Border and click the Outline button. But that places
a border only around the extreme *edges*, not the individual cells.

To accomplish my aim, I had to select a correctly outlined cell and
then use the Format Painter tool to apply it to my target.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

"Terry Pinnell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Is there something here I've misunderstood please? I've opened an old
> spreadsheet I created years ago. Most of the cells have an outline
> from the Border command, which is what I want. But I note that a few
> rows do not have their cells outlined. So I select all of these and
> use Format>Cells>Border and click the Outline button. But that places
> a border only around the extreme *edges*, not the individual cells.
>
> To accomplish my aim, I had to select a correctly outlined cell and
> then use the Format Painter tool to apply it to my target.
>
> --
> Terry, West Sussex, UK


That's pretty much how you have to do it. Or, if you prefer to use the
keyboard, select a cell whose format you like, and press CTRL-C (or Edit,
Copy). Then, paste it to another unformatted cell using Edit, Paste Special,
Format.

You have to do the inside borders, too.

You could select a nicely formatted row and click the Format painter icon and
paste over the offending rows.

Or you could create your own custom toolbar.
Tools|Customize|toolbars tab|New button
Give it a nice name

Then click on the commands tab|Format category
and place all the border icons you want on that toolbar.

There are lots and it could make life a bit simpler.

Terry Pinnell wrote:
>
> Is there something here I've misunderstood please? I've opened an old
> spreadsheet I created years ago. Most of the cells have an outline
> from the Border command, which is what I want. But I note that a few
> rows do not have their cells outlined. So I select all of these and
> use Format>Cells>Border and click the Outline button. But that places
> a border only around the extreme *edges*, not the individual cells.
>
> To accomplish my aim, I had to select a correctly outlined cell and
> then use the Format Painter tool to apply it to my target.
>
> --
> Terry, West Sussex, UK

--

Dave Peterson

The "outline" button will place an outline on your selection, as you've seen.
To include a border on each cell within the selection you need to use the
border type selection that has the horizontal and vertical lines inside the
outline box. It looks like a plus sign in a box.

"Terry Pinnell" wrote:

> Is there something here I've misunderstood please? I've opened an old
> spreadsheet I created years ago. Most of the cells have an outline
> from the Border command, which is what I want. But I note that a few
> rows do not have their cells outlined. So I select all of these and
> use Format>Cells>Border and click the Outline button. But that places
> a border only around the extreme *edges*, not the individual cells.
>
> To accomplish my aim, I had to select a correctly outlined cell and
> then use the Format Painter tool to apply it to my target.
>
> --
> Terry, West Sussex, UK
>