How to Remove Clear of Dotted Lines in Excel (3 Easy Fix)

Excel is a fantastic resource. I become more in love with it as I learn more about it.

The Excel development team put a lot of thought into it and is always working to enhance the user experience.

However, a few things still irritate me and need my frequently altering the default settings.

Dotted lines in the Excel spreadsheet are one such item.

I’ll show you in this lesson the potential causes of these dotted lines as well as how to get rid of them.

Then let’s get going!

This instruction explains: 1. Possible Causes of Excel's Dotted Lines 2. How to Get Rid of Dot Lines in Excel 2.1 Without Page Breaks 2.2 By deleting or changing the border style 2.3 By Disabling Gridlines

1. Possible Causes of Excel’s Dotted Lines

The dotted lines in Excel may appear for several reasons, including the following:

1. Due to Excel’s use of dotted lines to visually represent page breakout up
2. Set up borders that seem like dotted lines
3. gridlines that go throughout the whole worksheet. These are not dotted lines (rather faint solid lines that look like dotted borders around the cells)

You may easily remove these lines from your spreadsheet to disable any one or more of these options.

2. How to Get Rid of Dot Lines in Excel

Let’s get started and see how to get rid of these dotted lines in Excel in each case.

2.1 Without Page Breaks

One of Excel’s most irksome features for me is this. These dotted page breaks occasionally refuse to go, as shown in the image below.

I now see the benefit and need for maintaining these. Your worksheet is divided into sections so you can see what will print on one page and what will extend to the next.

Closing the worksheet and opening it again is a very simple (though not ideal) solution to this. The page break dotted lines will disappear when you reopen a worksheet.

These dotted lines can be eliminated in the following manner:

1. Select the File tab.
2. Select Options.
3. Click on the Advanced option in the left pane of the Excel Options dialogue box that appears.
4. To access the “Display choices for this worksheet” area, scroll down.
5. Uncheck “Show page breaks” in the options menu.

The aforementioned instructions would make the workbook’s page break dotted line disappear.

Keep in mind that the dotted lines would only stop appearing in the workbook for which you unchecked this option if you followed the previous instructions. If you wish to remove the dotted lines from additional workbooks, you must use the same procedure.

The dotted lines won’t appear if the print area in the worksheet has been set. Instead, the print area will be surrounded by a solid line.

2.2 By deleting or changing the border style

Some individuals might use dotted lines as the border, albeit this is less often than page breaks.

As demonstrated below:

1. You have two options for getting rid of these dotted lines: either fully remove the border or convert it to a standard solid line border.
2. The ways to eliminate these dotted borders are as follows:
3. Choose the cells you wish to be rid of the dotted border from.
   On the Home tab, click
4. Click the “Border” drop-down menu under the Font group.
5. Select “No Border” from the list of border choices that appears.

Any boundaries in the chosen cells would be removed by the aforementioned methods.

If you’d want to use a different style of the border in place of the dotted one, you may do that as well.

2.3 By Turning Off Gridlines

Even though the gridlines are solid lines rather than dotted lines, some individuals may still mistake them for dotted lines (as these are quite faint).

You may simply remove these gridlines, which are applied to the whole worksheet.

The ways to delete them are as follows:

1. Select the View tab.
2. Uncheck the Gridlines checkbox in the Show group.

I’m done now! The worksheet’s gridlines would all be eliminated by the aforementioned processes. Simply return and choose the same option if you want the Gridlines restored.

These are the three methods for getting rid of dotted lines in Excel.

I sincerely hope this instruction was helpful.