Gridlines are the light-colored borders surrounding every Excel cell. Basically, these lines create edges that help you read the data.
Imagine an excel sheet without borderline. The data will be overwritten and hard to read. That’s clearly not what you want.
By default, Excel doesn’t show the gridline when you print the worksheet. But with a few tricks, you can enable the gridline on your Excel sheet while printing.
In this article, I’ll show you three different manuals to print from Excel with gridlines.
So, bare with me till the end.
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How Do I Print from Excel with Gridlines? ― Quickest Ways
Let’s take a look at an excel sheet when printed without cell borders. 
As you can notice, the data is quite challenging to read. Now, imagine a worksheet with thousands of rows printed without the grid line. You’ll barely apart the rows and columns.
To save you from that misery, I’ve enlisted three unique methods to add cell borders when printing the spreadsheet.
Here are the methods to print from Excel with gridlines:
1. Print Gridlines using Sheet Options
Though Excel’s basic programming is set to print documents without any borderline, there are options in the ribbon that you can use. And, just to make it clear, this is the quickest way to add a cell border to your printouts.
Here are the steps to print cell gridlines using sheet options:
- Open the Excel sheet and move to the Page Layout tab.
- Look for the Sheet Options group.
- Tick on Print from under the Gridlines option.
- Press Ctrl+P to print out the document with gridlines.
Note: There are two print checkboxes in the Sheet options group. Make sure you don’t tick on the Headings option.
That’s it; that will help you print an excel sheet with lines on the page. This technique will indeed work for Excel 2013 and above. Try the following method if this doesn’t work.
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2. Print Gridlines using Page Setup Launcher Tool
Due to outdated office applications, Excel may sometimes fail to print sheets without any borderline. But, when you make the page setup to display the gridlines, it will never collapse the given commands.
So, you can consider this method a fail-safe way to include gridlines in your worksheet.
Here’s the procedure to print borderlines using page setup tools in Excel:
- Select the range of cells of your worksheet that you want to print.
- Go to the Page Layout tab. Look for the Page Setup section.
- Click on the launcher tool to launch from the Page Setup dialog box. A new dialog box, Page Setup, will appear.
- Go to the Sheet tab and tick on gridlines from below.
- Click on the Print preview to verify whether the borderline will show up when you print the document or not.
- Click on Ok once you’re satisfied setting up the page.
You may wonder whether you try the earlier method or this one to show gridlines in the printed Excel sheet. If the dataset is comparatively smaller, try the first method (which is the quickest).
And when you need some additional changes, including print gridlines, use the page setup method.
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3. Use Print Preview mode to Print Gridlines in Excel.
This is the end-moment solution you need. You can try this method when you’re already set to print the document and notice the gridline is missing from the worksheet.
Just so you remember, Press Ctrl + P to get to the print preview mode.
Here are the steps to use print preview to add gridlines in excel:
- Click on the page setup link from the bottom of the Print preview page.
- Move to the Sheet tab from the top of the Page Setup dialog box.
- Check the box next to Gridlines underneath the Print menu.
- Click Ok to get back to the Print preview page.
That’s it. You can go ahead and print the Excel sheet that was missing gridlines.
Now, if you’re using the web version of Microsoft Excel, and want to print a worksheet with gridlines, follow the subsequent section.
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How to Print Gridlines in Excel Online
Since the web version doesn’t support printing with gridlines, you need to tweak a little to border around the sheet. When you manually add a cell border in a spreadsheet, it shows up after printing.
Here are the steps to manually add borderlines in Excel:
- Select the range of cells you want to print.
- Go to the Home tab on Excel Web.
- Click on the Border icon > All Borders in the Font group.
- Select File > Print to print the sheet with gridlines.
After that, you’ll find the cell border of the printed document.
Using Microsoft Excel in macOS and trying to do the same? No worries, read the following section.
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How to Put Grid Lines on Excel for Mac
Excel for Windows is not so different from the Mac version. Printing excel sheets with gridline is pretty much the same procedure. Follow the steps for a few changes in action.
Here’s the procedure to put gridlines on Mac Excel:
- Open the worksheet containing the data you want to print.
- Go to the View tab and click on the Show group.
- Tick on the Gridlines check box in there.
- Press command + S to save the file.
After that, you can print that copy. And this time, you’ll notice cell borders on printed documents.
Here’s a complete guide on how to Lock and Unlock Cells in Excel
How to fix Excel Gridlines not Showing When Printing
Sometimes, you’ll notice a gridline missing from Excel due to not updating to the latest version. When the draft quality feature of Excel causes you low-quality printing copy, you’ll notice this issue.
You can turn off draft quality to avoid this issue.
Here are the steps to turn off draft quality to fix gridlines not showing in Excel print:
- Open MS Excel on your computer.
- Switch to the Page Layout tab in your Ribbon interface.
- Click on the square in the corner of the Page Setup section.
- Go to the sheet tab and tick on the draft quality checkbox.
- Click Ok to save the changes.
That’s it. After following these steps, you’ll resolve Excel grid lines not showing on Excel printed copies.
If you have any further queries, check out the following section.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I show gridlines in Excel?
Go to the page layout tab on Excel > click on sheet options > Check Print underneath gridline.
How do I get the gridlines to print in Excel?
Go to Page Setup, from Print preview mode > Move to the Sheet tab > Tick on gridlines from below > Click Ok.
How do I show gridlines in Excel for Mac?
Select data range > Move to View tab > Show group > Tick on the Gridlines check box.
Conclusion
Through this article, I’ve clarified your confusion about showing gridlines on an Excel sheet and related issues. I know you’ll be able to see the gridlines after following these methods.
However, in case your Excel interface is different than mine, and you can’t find the options described here, feel free to comment.
A team of Excel experts will be delighted to assist you.
