Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hey!

How do I hide Calc's gridlines, or make them white? I want to make my spreadsheets as simple as possible by only having grid lines where absolutely necessary. Plus, I see all the Big Four audit firms doing this.

Thanks!

The grid is a view option, a visual aid that is not stored in the document. The final output (print or PDF) shows only borders. Borders are formatting attributes stored in the document.
Surely, the 4 loony bins run Windows+Excel on all work stations. That program behaves completely insane when any cell back color (formatting attribute) covers the helping grid (view option). Unfortunately, LibreOffice mimics this imbecility just for the sake of looking Excelish.
In AOO this is configurable in Tools>Options>Calc>View>"Grid Lines"
You should replace this loser suite with the real Excel thing if the control freaks mean a lot to you.

If you're talking about within the Calc spreadsheet, select the range of cells you want to hide the grid lines and then right click>format cells>Borders>choose "White" for the border lines color. Then, in the box to the left, click on the appropriate
vertical / horizontal lines to be changed. Click OK.

If you're wanting this done on the printed output, after you've defined the print range, click on File>Page Preview>Format
Page>Sheet ( check to see that the box next to Grid is unchecked ).

thinman3

I'm so sorry - yeah I was talking about borders!

Thanks a lot y'all!

One last question. If I set all four borders in the default cell style to white, and make a new "Table" cell style and set all its four borders to grey - how come its far right and far bottom borders won't show?

To get the Border on the right side of the second lined column, you have to select the column to its' right and then
format only the left side as gray and all other sides as white. To get a gray line along the bottom row, highlight the
row below and format only the top line to be gray and the other sides as white.

But that makes no sense. Why's it gotta be that hard?

Select your cells, /Format /Cells : Borders tab, pick fourth icon from left "Set outer border and all inner lines" and choose your colour. Voila!

Still nothing, sorry!

I avoid fiddling with borders unless it's the very last thing and I have nothing better to do It never comes out quite right without a lot of fiddling. I think this is because, first, a spreadsheet is not a table. A table is what we want, but that's not the way Calc works. And second, a spreadsheet is not a platform for creating applications or forms. Again, that's what we want, but it's not what a spreadsheet is designed to do. Finally, Calc has not had the benefit of years of intensive tweaking (like Excel) to make it do those things we want but that spreadsheets don't do well.

All that aside, you may find things go somewhat easier if you change the color of the grid lines under Tools > Options > OO.org > Appearance > Spreadsheet > Gridlines.

I generally set them to some (very) light color and leave it at that, but you can set them to white and then add borders where you want them.

Note: that setting is for the application; it isn't stored in the sheet and it won't have any effect on the appearance of the sheet when someone else opens it. If you're concerned about the appearance when someone else opens the document, you're building an application and that's not what Calc is. If you need absolute control over the appearance, send them a pdf

I've never had much luck trying to use cell styles to apply a border, because I want the border to be independent of the other formatting in a cell but the styles combine everything together. You have to have separate styles for every different combination of border and the other formatting. It works better to just add the borders directly, after all the other formatting is finished.

Thanks man. I guess we'll just have to submit bug reports and feature requests to OOo until the tables turn.

I just had a sudden rush to do my stuff like PwC - now that I've slept on it though I think I'll ditch it.

Tony

There is no proper solution for spreadsheet borders because there are no tables in spreadsheets. Sheets consist of freely movable and pasteable atomic cells. Just do not pay too much attention to the borders, get your work done and apply some borders to finalized presentation sheets.

tonyman wrote:Still nothing, sorry!

I wouldn't have posted if it didn't work for me.

I think you want to hide the basic gridlines, i think this is what you want...

go to tools/options/open the openoffice calc tab (plus sign)/click view/uncheck gridlines.. that should do it

Well, I think they want to use Writer with some tables. The linked PwC spreadsheet does not contain a single formula. It's entirely about text layout.

Hello,
To turn off grid lines on the whole spread-sheet:
- Select Open Office, Preferences
- Under OpenOffice Calc, select View
- Un-click Visual Aids, Grid lines check-box
This turns off ALL gridlines - but it keeps any of the cell-borders you may have defined.

Note: This affects ALL your spread-sheets, going forward. To turn the grid lines back on, follow the instructions above, except at the last step CLICK the Visual Aids, Grid lines check-box.

RoryOF wrote:Select your cells, /Format /Cells : Borders tab, pick fourth icon from left "Set outer border and all inner lines" and choose your colour. Voila!

    ⇑
   This . . . is exactly right.

My Experience:

Select Cells
Click Format Cells
Click 'Borders' tab
Color is greyed-out (broken)
Select Style "- none -"
Click OK
Nothing changed
Click Format Cells
My changes were reverted.

As "asknak" pointed out, "Calc has not had the benefit of years of intensive tweaking (like Excel)" - yes, only 17+ years. Just getting started, and all.

I opened and Win VB, and it worked immediately in Excel. Hopefully, some year, I can quit opening Windows Virtual Boxes to get work done.

Jack Wells wrote:My Experience:

Select Cells
Click Format Cells
Click 'Borders' tab
Color is greyed-out (broken)
Select Style "- none -"
Click OK
Nothing changed
Click Format Cells
My changes were reverted.

As "asknak" pointed out . . .
. . .
. . .
etc.

You're aware this is an OpenOffice thread, right? Because your signature mentions LibreOffice  And, while I'm here, if you've used both, how do they compare, mainly in terms of the document and spreadsheet apps? I've yet to use LibreOffice but have wondered if I might be missing out.

We advise on both OpenOffice and LibreOffice in this Forum; as the underlying code is much the same many solutions are common to both applications.

Ah. Live and learn thanks, didn't know.

tonyman wrote:But that makes no sense. Why's it gotta be that hard?

It can seem hard, yes, but really, it does make total sense the way it is.

Rory nails it with

RoryOF wrote:Select your cells, /Format /Cells : Borders tab, pick fourth icon from left "Set outer border and all inner lines" and choose your colour. Voila!

But since that won't leave horizontal "lines" grey if you only wanted the (in text admittedly disturbing) VERTICAL lines to vanish like oxy action, I do it like Acknak writes:

acknak wrote:I avoid fiddling with borders unless it's the very last thing and I have nothing better to do

... but you can set them to white and then add borders where you want them.

Basically, where you see on the right under "Properties" (if your screen is set up standard as per install) UNtick "Show cell grid lines", and then only color those cell BORDERS grey that don't disturb your reading/visibility.
Because, really, you need to distinguish VIEWING while working on SPREADSHEETS (which indeed aren't meant for prose/texts, lol), and PRINTING the final output/result.

Your Big 4 audit firms do it the SAME way (I worked in one when young(er)). What YOU see in (pdf) printed reports is not what THEY see when they work on it.