To hide gridlines in Google Sheets, use the “show” menu. I’ll show where to find this (and how to add only specific lines in your spreadsheet) below. Note that my guide shows how to hide those gray lines and also how to add thicker grids around different cells.
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How to Get Rid of Gridlines in Google Sheets
- Open your spreadsheet
- Go to View > Show from the toolbar
- Uncheck the option Gridlines
The whole process only takes about five seconds. Of course, if you’re looking to adjust the style of your gridlines, you can do that too.
Hide the Gridlines in Google Sheets with the Show Menu
Below are the steps to hide gridlines from the entire worksheet in Google Sheets:
- Open the worksheet in which you want to hide the gridlines
- Click View on the menu bar, then click Show.
- Click the Gridlines options. This will uncheck this option and remove gridlines from the entire worksheet.
The gridlines option in the View tab is a toggle option. This means that if you want the gridlines to come back again, you need to go back to this option and click on it.
Often, this is adjusted for appearance purposes. It’s not going to affect your apps script, formulas, or data.
Also, note that when you show or hide gridlines in Google Sheets, it’s only applied to the sheet that is active. If you want this to be applied to all the worksheets, you will have to go to each sheet and hide the gridlines manually.
Showing Gridlines in a Specific Range
In case you want to show gridlines only in a specific range and not in the entire worksheet, first remove the gridlines using the steps above, and then apply the border to the selected range of cells using the below steps:
- Select the range of cells where you want to have a gridline
- Click the Borders icon in the toolbar
- Click on the Borders icon to apply a border to all the selected cells.
How to Get Rid of Gridlines from Certain Cells in Google Sheets
Although there’s no direct way to get rid of gridlines from certain cells in Google Sheets, there’s an easy way to accomplish the same goal. Here’s what you can do:
- Select the cells you want to have gridlines.
- Go to the border icon.
- Select the first border.
- Go to View > Show in the toolbar.
- Uncheck the Gridline option.
This will remove cell lines in Google Sheets from the specific cells you did not select.
Related: Insert Page Breaks Google Sheets
Show/Hide Gridlines While Printing
When you have gridlines present in the worksheet in Google Sheets, and you print that worksheet (or a part of that worksheet), you’ll notice that it also prints the gridlines.
If you don’t want the gridlines to be printed, you have an option to disable it.
Below are the steps to print a range in Google Sheets while hiding the gridlines:
- Select the range of cells that you want to print
- Click the File option in the menu
- Click the Print option (you can also use the keyboard shortcut – Control + P)
- In the Print settings screen, click on the Formatting drop-down and uncheck the ‘Show Gridlines’ option
- Click Next and Print.
The above steps would hide the gridlines from the selected range of cells. If you want to show the gridlines, check this option. You can also set the print area here.
Frequently Asked Questions about Grid Lines
Gridlines are something that makes data look good in Google Sheets.
By default, Gridlines are already applied to all the cells in Google Sheets. But sometimes, you may only want to have these gridlines (or borders) on some specific cells or rows/columns and not everywhere.
In this tutorial, I showed you how to hide gridlines in Google Sheets and how to make them appear while printing. However, some questions might come up. I’m hoping to answer them here.
Can I add gridlines to specific cells in Google Sheets?
You don’t have to use the show gridlines option or the print menu to add gridlines only to specific parts of your Google Sheet spreadsheet. Just select the “four-square” box and choose which lines you want to show.
Here’s what that looks like:
Can I hide gridlines for selected cells only?
To hide all gridlines only for selected cells, you can use the same process but in reverse. Turn off the “view gridlines” option in the “view” menu. Then, select all your cells to add gridlines. Finally, choose the cells where you want to hide gridlines and use the four-square button to hide only those gridlines in your selected area.
How do I get rid of gridlines?
The easiest way to get rid of gridlines in Google Sheets is to select the “view” menu, then the “show” menu, then (if there’s a checkmark by it), click “gridlines”. That hides the gridlines in your workbook.
How do I restore removed gridlines?
Just go back to the view menu, click show, and reselect “gridlines”. That will make the gray lines appear again in your worksheet.
Conclusion
However, in case you have applied a border to the range of cells you want to print, you can’t remove it from the Print screen. If you don’t want the border to be printed, you need to go back to the worksheet and remove it.
If you found this article helpful, you can also check out how to unhide rows in Google Sheets.
You may also like the following Google Sheets tutorials:
