How to Remove Gridlines in Excel: Quick Guide for Cleaner Spreadsheets

Gridlines are those faint gray lines that split your Excel worksheet into cells. They help you keep track of rows and columns when you are entering data. The moment you build a dashboard, a presentation, or a tidy report, those lines start to look messy.

They fight your borders. They distract from your charts. They make a clean layout feel busy. Most people who learn how to remove gridlines in Excel never go back. The difference is huge.

Here is the part nobody tells you. Excel actually has two different kinds of lines that look almost identical. The first kind is the default view gridlines, which only appear on screen. The second kind is print gridlines, which show up when you print or export to PDF.

You can hide one and keep the other. You can hide both. You can hide them on a single sheet, on every sheet in the workbook, or just inside a specific block of cells by painting white fill into the background. The trick is knowing which switch controls what.

This guide walks through every method that works in Excel for Windows, Excel for Mac, Excel for the web, and the mobile app. You will also pick up a few habits that pros use. Like turning gridlines off before building a financial report, or leaving them on while editing and switching them off only when you save the final copy.

If you have ever wondered why your printed sheet still shows grid lines even though the screen looks clean, that gets fixed here too. By the end, you will know exactly which button to press, which menu hides the option you need, and how to keep your sheets looking professional every single time.

What Excel Gridlines Actually Do

Gridlines are visual guides. They are not borders. Excel ships with light gray lines turned on by default because brand new users need a sense of where one cell ends and the next begins.

Once you start building real spreadsheets, that helpful guide turns into visual noise. The good news? Gridlines are entirely cosmetic. Turning them off does not delete data, change formulas, or break references. You are just hiding a layer of decoration.

Think of gridlines like the lines on graph paper. Useful while you sketch. Pointless once you have inked the final drawing.

Excel keeps gridlines separate from cell borders, which are actual lines that you draw on purpose. Borders print. Borders save with the file. Gridlines do not show on a chart, on an image background, or on cells filled with a color.

If your sheet looks like it has missing gridlines, check whether someone applied a white fill. That is the most common reason people think their Excel file is broken.

The Quick Way: View Tab Method

The fastest way to remove gridlines is through the View tab on the ribbon. Open your worksheet, click View, and look for the Show group. There is a checkbox labeled Gridlines.

Uncheck it and the lines disappear instantly across the entire active sheet. Tick it again to bring them back.

This is a per-sheet setting, which surprises a lot of users. If your workbook has five tabs and you only unticked the box on Sheet1, the other four sheets still show gridlines. To hide them everywhere, you need to repeat the action on each sheet or use a workbook-wide method we cover below.

Removing Gridlines for Print and PDF Export

This is the setting that trips up most users. You build a beautiful sheet, hide the screen gridlines, and feel proud. Then you hit Print or Save as PDF, and the gridlines come back like a ghost.

Why? Because Excel keeps screen display and print display in two different settings.

To remove print gridlines, head to the Page Layout tab. Look for the Sheet Options group. There are two columns, Gridlines and Headings. Each column has a View checkbox and a Print checkbox.

Untick the Print checkbox under Gridlines. Now when you print or export, no faint gray lines will appear in the output.

Some companies require print gridlines for compliance reports or audit trails. In that case, leave the print box checked and only hide screen gridlines. Or the opposite. Hide screen gridlines while you edit so you can see what the final look will be, but keep print gridlines on so the printed copy has visual structure.

Hiding Gridlines on All Sheets at Once

Right-click any sheet tab at the bottom of your workbook. Choose Select All Sheets. Now whatever you do happens to every sheet simultaneously.

Go to the View tab and untick Gridlines. All sheets are now clean. After you are done, right-click any tab again and choose Ungroup Sheets so you do not accidentally edit every sheet at the same time.

This shortcut saves serious time when you inherit a workbook with twenty tabs and need every one to look polished.

The White Fill Trick for Specific Areas

Sometimes you do not want to hide every gridline. You only want a dashboard panel or a header block to look seamless.

Select the cells you want to clean up, then go to Home, Fill Color, and choose white. The gridlines disappear under the fill while the rest of the sheet stays normal.

This is the classic dashboard look. Pros use this constantly because it gives you targeted control. You can fill one block white, leave another block with default gridlines, and keep a third block with a colored background.

The eye reads each block as a different section, which makes complex reports easier to scan.

If you save the file and the white fill stays, you know it worked. White fill is a real format that lives inside the cell, unlike the gridline view setting which only hides the screen layer.

Use this when you want the clean look to follow the file even if someone else opens it with gridlines turned on by default.

Changing Gridline Color Instead of Hiding

Not everyone wants to hide gridlines completely. Some users prefer to soften the contrast by changing the color.

Go to File, Options, Advanced, and scroll to the section called Display options for this worksheet. There is a Gridline color picker. Choose a very light gray, a soft blue, or even white if you want them invisible while leaving the setting technically on.

This option is per-worksheet, not per-workbook, so you can have different colors on different sheets in the same file.

Why Gridlines Sometimes Come Back After You Hide Them

You hide gridlines, save the file, send it to a colleague, and they tell you the gridlines are still there. Frustrating.

The reason is that view-level gridline settings are saved with each worksheet. The setting does save inside the .xlsx file, so when the recipient opens the workbook they should see your saved state.

The most common reasons gridlines reappear: the recipient is looking at a different sheet, they have a setting in their own Excel that forces gridlines on, or you toggled the wrong control.

Another sneaky issue is conditional formatting. If a colleague applied conditional rules that put a colored background on certain cells, the gridlines might appear in some cells and disappear in others. Check Home, Conditional Formatting, Manage Rules to see what is active.

Themes and templates also have their own settings. If you switched themes mid-project, gridlines can come back. Always check both the View tab and the Page Layout tab when troubleshooting.

Gridlines and Page Breaks Are Not the Same

Excel also shows dashed blue lines that represent page breaks. These look like gridlines but behave very differently.

Page breaks indicate where the sheet will split when printed. To remove them, click View, then Normal view to leave the Page Break Preview mode.

Some users see those dashed lines and think their gridlines are broken. They are not. They are page breaks. Two completely separate features, often confused.

Using VBA to Hide Gridlines Across the Workbook

Power users automate gridline removal with a tiny VBA macro. Press Alt F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor. Insert a new module and paste a short loop that runs through every sheet and sets ActiveWindow.DisplayGridlines to False.

Run the macro and every sheet is clean instantly. This works wonders when you receive a workbook with fifty sheets and need to standardize the look.

You can extend the macro to also turn off row and column headings, freeze panes at the right cell, or apply a uniform zoom level. Once you write it, save the file as a macro-enabled workbook (.xlsm) so the code persists.

If macros sound scary, you can also use Excel Power Automate or a Python script with the openpyxl library. The internal property is called showGridLines under the sheetView element of every worksheet. Setting it to 0 hides gridlines.

When to Keep Gridlines On

There are moments when gridlines actually help. Data entry sheets, raw data exports, audit logs, and anything where someone has to read row by row benefits from visual guides.

The rule of thumb? Remove gridlines on anything a non-Excel user will see, and keep them on while you build, edit, and audit.

Many analysts have two workbooks open at once. The working copy with gridlines on for productivity, and the final report with gridlines off for delivery. Treat gridlines as a layer you toggle based on audience.

Hiding Headings Along With Gridlines

The row numbers on the left and the column letters on the top are called headings. They are separate from gridlines, but they create the same kind of visual noise on a finished report.

Many pros hide headings whenever they hide gridlines. The control sits right next to the Gridlines box on the View tab in the Show group. Uncheck Headings and the row numbers and column letters disappear.

Together with gridlines off, the worksheet looks more like a printed document than a spreadsheet. This is the look you want for executive dashboards and client deliverables.

On the Page Layout tab, headings also have a Print toggle. By default Excel does not print headings even when they show on screen, but the option exists for sheets where you want the printout to include the row and column references.

Gridlines in Charts and Tables

Charts have their own version of gridlines, completely independent of the worksheet gridlines.

When you create a chart, Excel adds horizontal gridlines that help readers see values. To remove them, click the chart, then click the Chart Elements button (the green plus sign on Windows) and untick Gridlines.

You can also right-click any gridline inside the chart and choose Delete. Removing chart gridlines is purely cosmetic, just like worksheet gridlines, and does not change the underlying data.

Tables made with Insert, Table have a different feature called table style. Some table styles include light banding rows that look a bit like gridlines.

If you want a fully clean look, click anywhere in the table, go to Table Design, and pick a style without banded rows. Or click Clear under the table style gallery to remove all styling.

Common Mistakes When Removing Gridlines

The number one mistake? Confusing gridlines with borders. People delete borders by mistake when they actually wanted to hide gridlines.

Borders are real lines you added intentionally. Gridlines are the faint gray decoration. If you find that some lines disappeared and others stayed, you probably toggled gridlines and the remaining lines are borders.

To remove borders too, select the cells, go to Home, Borders dropdown, and choose No Border. Now compare the look. Borders gone but gridlines on means light gray decoration everywhere. Borders gone and gridlines off equals a completely clean sheet.

The second mistake is forgetting that hiding gridlines is per-sheet. People press the View tab toggle, see Sheet1 turn clean, and assume the whole workbook is done. Then they print and three other tabs show gridlines.

Always use Select All Sheets when you want a uniform look. The third mistake is leaving print gridlines on while removing screen gridlines. Your monitor shows a clean sheet, but the printed copy shows the lines. Print Preview before every export.

Setting Gridlines Off by Default for New Workbooks

Excel does not have a global gridline setting that turns them off for every new workbook out of the box. The workaround is to create a default template.

Open a new blank workbook, untick the Gridlines box on the View tab, optionally untick Headings, set your favorite font and theme, then save the file as an Excel template (.xltx) named Book.xltx inside your XLSTART folder.

The XLSTART folder is usually under your user profile. Every new blank workbook you open from then on uses your custom settings, including gridlines off.

This is a power user move that saves countless clicks over a year of work. For Mac users, the path is different but the idea is the same. Save Book.xltx into your User Library Application Support Microsoft Office User Templates folder.

Final Thoughts on a Cleaner Excel Workspace

Removing gridlines is one of the simplest visual upgrades you can make to any Excel file. Yet it makes a huge difference in how professional your work looks.

A clean sheet sends a signal that the data has been considered, structured, and prepared for an audience. A sheet with default gridlines, headings, and no borders looks like a draft.

Now that you know exactly where the controls live, on the View tab for screen, on the Page Layout tab for printing, and in cell fills for surgical control, you can apply the right method for the right situation without searching menus every time.

Practice these toggles on a real workbook. Open a sheet you use often, turn gridlines off, apply a few intentional borders, and compare the before and after. The difference is striking.

Then save the file with the clean settings so it stays that way for whoever opens it next. Excel rewards habits like this. Small visual choices compound into a reputation for tidy, trustworthy reports.