Run for the border: using borders in Word

Article contributed by Suzanne Barnhill

You can create a wide variety of special effects in Word using paragraph and table borders. Use of borders, however, is often misunderstood. This article will attempt to clear up some misunderstandings and provide useful tips for using borders effectively.

Borders, boundaries, gridlines

One of the most common problems in dealing with (and talking about) tables in Word is failure to distinguish between borders and gridlines.

When you insert a table in most versions of Word, it is by default given a ½ pt single rule border around all cells. Since there are many uses in Word for borderless tables, the first thing many users want to do is remove the borders. And, provided this is the first thing you do, it’s relatively simple, in most versions of Word: if you press Ctrl+Alt+U (TableUpdateAutoFormat) immediately after inserting the table, the borders will be removed. Unfortunately, in some language versions of Word 97, including UK English, pressing Ctrl+Alt+U inserts a ú symbol instead of removing the borders, so you have to assign TableUpdateAutoFormat to a different shortcut instead – you can't assign Ctrl+Alt+U to TableUpdateAutoFormat yourself, because it's already assigned to it; it just doesn't work in some language versions of Word (this appears to be a bug).

Word also displays table gridlines by default (Table | Show/Hide Gridlines), so it may not be immediately obvious that a table is borderless. As explained in Why don’t my table borders print?, gridlines are merely a visual representation of cell boundaries. They do not print. To make “gridlines” that will print, you have to apply a border.

Access to borders

There are (at least) three ways to apply or remove borders in Word: the Format | Borders and Shading dialog, the Tables and Borders toolbar, and the Borders button on the Formatting toolbar. They offer varying levels of customization.

Level 1: Borders and Shading dialog
The Format | Borders and Shading dialog gives you the most control over borders and also gives you access to Page Borders (Word 97 and above) and shading. Using the Setting buttons, you can choose from among several preset borders. Borders can be applied to tables, table cells, text paragraphs, and selected text, and the preset borders offered vary according to the context. For text paragraphs, for example, Word offers the “Shadow” and “3-D” options, which should automatically apply a combination of borders to create a shadowed or 3-D effect. Actually, although “Shadow” will work with any border or line weight (and the only way to get a deeper shadow is to choose a heavier line), “3-D” doesn’t work at all unless you choose one of the line styles that combine lighter and heavier lines. It merely reverses the inside and outside lines to create the 3-D effect.

If you are working in a table, the presets include the “All” and “Grid” options. “All” applies the same border to all cell boundaries, both outside and inside. (This is the default format when you insert a table.) “Grid” appears to do the same thing (although it actually changes the inner border to ¾ pt!) – until you choose a different line weight or style; Word then applies that to just the outside boundaries, giving you a heavier line around the entire table and, by default, a ¾ pt rule for the inside boundaries.

Using this setting, the only way to get heavier Inside lines – or lighter ones than ¾ pt – is to format them manually in the Preview. After selecting “Grid” and applying your thick outer border; but without closing the dialog, click on one of the inner lines in the preview pane before you change the width setting (otherwise you will just end up changing the weight of the outer border again!). Now change the Width setting to whatever weight you want the inner border lines to have; and click both the horizontal and vertical inner lines in the Preview. Then click OK.

A good general rule to remember when changing the weights of lines in the Preview pane is that you must always select the line you want to adjust before you change the Width setting; which is downright unintuitive, but once you know the rule, it's simple enough to apply.

Another option is “Custom,” which allows you to select different line weights and styles for various sides of a cell or paragraph. Actually, you don’t have to choose this option; it will be chosen for you if you change a given border from the set Box, All, Grid, Shadow, or 3-D settings. It is not immediately obvious how to do this, though. You must first select the line weight, style, and color, then click on the appropriate line (or corresponding button) on the Preview at the right side of the dialog (if you click these lines or buttons before selecting a line, you will either apply the default style or, if it is already applied, remove it). If you are applying a border to text paragraphs, you will not have the Inside option unless you have more than one paragraph of text selected. This is more difficult to explain than to figure out; with a little experimentation, you will see how the preview works.

If you are formatting entire text paragraphs, the Options… button will be enabled. The Options tab allows you to set (from 1 to 31 points) how far the border should be from text. The defaults are 1 point top and bottom and 4 points left and right. The distance options are available only for the sides of the paragraph where you have a border. If you want a top border, for example, to extend beyond text right and left, changing the Left and Right options will have no effect; the border will be exactly the same width as your paragraph. You can get around this by applying a white (nonprinting) border on the sides and then setting the distance as needed.

In tables the Options tab is unavailable. To increase the distance from text, you must use paragraph indents (left and right) or Spacing Before/After (top and bottom) in Word 97 and earlier or adjust the cell padding in Word 2000/2002. In text paragraphs, Spacing Before/After is added above or below the border; if you want additional space before and/or after a table, you will have to add Spacing After to the paragraph above and/or Spacing Before to the paragraph below.

If you are trying to border selected text (less than an entire paragraph), the dialog appears to allow you to choose which sides of the text to border, but in fact the only available options are those that create a box (Box, Shadow, and 3-D), and you cannot adjust the distance from text. If you want to put a border on one or more (but not all) sides of selected text, investigate the EQ field in Word’s Help; the \x switch for this field, together with switches that indicate top, bottom, left, and right, allows you to do this.

Level 2: Tables and Borders toolbar

By default there is a button on the Standard toolbar (next to Insert Table) to toggle display of the Tables and Borders toolbar. Although this toolbar is by default floating, you can, if desired, dock it at the top or bottom of your screen to get it out of the way. (Docking it at the side is not recommended; if you do that, the dropdown list boxes become buttons that bring up the Borders and Shading dialog.)

With this toolbar you can accomplish many of the same things you can do in the Borders and Shading dialog, although for most purposes, the Borders and Shading dialog works better.

You can choose a line style, weight, and color and, using the Borders palette, apply borders to an entire table (or paragraph) or selected cells. (You don’t have access to the Options tab, but this is unavailable in tables, anyway.) The Borders palette has ten buttons you can use to apply Inside, Outside, Top, Bottom, Left, or Right borders or a grid (All) or to remove borders entirely (No Border). You can also remove borders selectively by clicking “on” buttons to turn them off. The border applied by the buttons on the Borders palette defaults to the most recently selected style, weight, and color, which is displayed on the toolbar.

If you will be applying many borders of the same weight to selected sides of selected table cells, you may find it more convenient to display the Borders palette alone. Click the down arrow on the Borders button and release the mouse button. As you pass the mouse over the top of the palette, you will see a tiny title bar become active, and a ScreenTip says, “Drag to make this menu float.” Click on the title bar and drag the palette off the toolbar. You can then close the Tables and Borders toolbar, leaving the Borders palette floating. This little toolbar doesn’t really get in the way, but you can dock it on any side of your screen if desired.

Incidentally, the Word 2000 Borders palette, as shown in these screen captures, contains three buttons that are not present on the Word 97 one, all three being almost completely useless! The two “diagonal” buttons create diagonal lines that intersect your text like this:

They do not actually split your cell diagonally; they just create the appearance of doing so. If you want to further this deception, you will need to format text accordingly:

The “Horizontal line” button inserts a web-based horizontal line (i.e. an <hr> tag) like this:

... which is similar to applying a paragraph border but far less flexible (for instance, you have no control over its color, its thickness, or its distance from the text). There is never likely to be an occasion when you would want to use any of the new buttons!

One thing the toolbar is good for is applying fills; in Word 97 and above, when you apply a fill using the Borders and Shading dialog, it often changes your borders in unexpected ways. Unfortunately, there are also some disadvantages to using the Tables and Borders toolbar.

Level 3: Borders button on the Formatting toolbar
The Borders button on the Formatting toolbar opens the same palette as the one on the Tables and Borders toolbar. You don’t get the option of selecting line style, weight, and color (it merely applies the currently selected default), but you can “tear off” this palette to make a floating toolbar the same way you can the one on the Tables and Borders toolbar. For quick formatting, and especially for removing borders, this is definitely the quickest method.

Some “gotchas”

	Conversely, if consecutive paragraphs have the same formatting and have the same border style applied, they will all be in the same box. You can apply an Inside border to separate the paragraphs, but if you want them to be actually in separate boxes, there are two ways to accomplish this: 1. Insert an unbordered paragraph between them. Format the line spacing of the paragraph to be Exactly the distance you want between the boxes. This assumes that the two paragraphs do not have any Spacing Before or After 2. If your paragraphs have Spacing Before or After and you want to preserve this distance between the boxes, you can use a more devious method: take advantage of the first “gotcha” and make the paragraphs different. Give one of them an infinitesimal indent. If you press Alt while dragging the left or right margin marker on the ruler, you can move it as little as 0.01".
	You may find that you sometimes get borders when you don’t want them. If you have not cleared the check box for automatic borders on the AutoFormat As You Type tab of Tools | AutoCorrect, these may appear as unexpectedly (and as welcome) as the Spanish Inquisition. For more on this, see There is a line in my document that I can't delete.
	If you are coming to Word from WordPerfect, you may be accustomed to seeing a distinct difference between a bottom border on one cell and a top border on the one below. Perhaps you've even combined these to get a double or heavier border. But you may also have found that this arrangement often made it very difficult to align intersecting borders properly. Word works differently: a bottom border on one cell is in exactly the same location as a top border on the cell below. This is normally a good thing, but every now and then Word, in its infinite wisdom, will decide that the border you applied as a bottom border is actually at least in part a top border on the cell below, making it impossible to remove it by turning off the Bottom Border button on the Borders palette. At such times you must just shrug and move on to the cell below and remove the top border.
	Tables continued from one page to another often lose the bottom border of the last row; sometimes you can restore it by explicitly applying a bottom border to that row (not just borders between rows). Word has a way of  perversely interpreting a border between rows as being the top of one row or the bottom of another, but not both.

Some disadvantages of using the Tables and Borders toolbar

Drawing tables

If you draw a table using the pencil tool on the Tables and Borders toolbar, the cells are given the default ½ pt black rule border unless you have selected a different line style, weight, and/or color on the toolbar dropdown before drawing the table. You can change the borders using the tools on the toolbar. You can also remove all or some of the borders by selecting cells and clicking the appropriate buttons on the Borders palette. It may be tempting to use the Eraser tool to erase borders, but this often doesn’t work; what frequently happens is that you instead erase the cell boundary, thereby merging two adjacent cells, which may not be at all what you intended. The Eraser tool does have one real use though. It provides by far the quickest way of merging two columns. But even for that it is flawed – you can only merge one page's worth at a time!

I personally don’t recommend drawing tables. I have yet to find a table that could not be effectively created using Insert Table and then adjusting cell widths and merging or splitting as necessary. And I have seen (and corrected) some horrible messes made by inexpert users using Draw Table (actually, even for expert users, it is very difficult to avoid making a mess of your tables if you use this tool).

If you do use the table drawing tools, be sure to display cell gridlines and/or text boundaries so you will know if you have inadvertently erased a cell boundary when you meant to erase a border; better yet, don’t use the eraser for anything except erasing cell boundaries.