Borderline Command in Excel 2010 part 1

Continuing our sweep across the formatting buttons gathered in the Font group, we’ve reached a button which, if you want to be  technical about it, really doesn’t impact fonts directly—the border button (Figure 4–11):

But that doesn’t detract from its usefulness, however. The border button draws lines, or borders, around cells, and not the characters entered in those cells. Borders are often applied around groups of numbers in order to call proper attention to  them. You’re viewing the default border setting above, called simply Bottom Border, and simplicity notwithstanding, a bit of  explanation is required. If you select a range of cells and click the Bottom Border setting you see above, a border will be drawn  only along the bottom border of the last, or bottom cell; that is, all you’ll see is one horizontal border lining the very  lowest cell in the range—and not the bottom border of every cell you’ve selected. In other words, if you select nine cells and   click the bottom border button you won’t see this (Figure 4–12):

because the border options do their work by default on the outer borders of a selected range, that’s all, not the internal  borders of the cells (the ones inside the range). And if you click the drop-down arrow alongside the button (Figure 4–14):

you’ll discover that, with one exception, all the options subsumed under the Borders heading do their thing around a segment  of the outer border of the range you’ve selected. The accompanying images clearly tell you what you can expect. The  exception to the above: If you select All Borders, then all the borders around all the cells in a range will receive borders  (Figure 4–15):

Note that the No Borders removes unwanted borders. Select a bordered range, click No Borders, and the borders disappear. And what about the border commands shelved beneath the Draw Border heading? Here some very different options present  themselves (Figure 4–16):

First, clicking Draw Border turns your mouse pointer into a pencil, enabling you to “draw” an outside border around any range  of cells you wish (Figure 4–17):

And after you’ve drawn your range the pencil remains available, giving you the opportunity to draw other borders elsewhere if  you wish. To turn the pencil off, just press the Esc key.