Word – How to preview table borders in Microsoft Word 2010

microsoft-word-2010printing

I'm pretty positive I was able to preview table borders in MS Word. E.g. table borders were visible on screen, but not printed on paper. I would like to get that behaviour back, but cannot find such option.

To reiterate: I want my table borders to be visible on-screen only, I know how to change table borders' width etc., but these changes are reflected on paper too…

Best Answer

You can enable View Gridlines under Table Tools > Layout when a table is focused. When no border is set, Word will draw a light-blue, dashed line in its place.

view gridlines

Demonstration:

  • With borders:

    with

  • Without borders:

    without

  • What is printed:

    blank

Alternatively,

Word will draw table gridlines if you have Show text boundaries enabled under File > Options > Advanced > Show document content. The View Gridlines option above only applies to tables while this applies to the entire document. Also, the lines are dotted instead of dashed.

options

boundaries

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