Is there a way to hide gridlines in Numbers?

Ok, here is how to do it. Watch the video below. I wrote bit of a nasty post here a few weeks ago and I need to retract it 🙂 Numbers is a very cool spreadsheet program and I now, after using it for several days and watching the tutorials, like it much better than Excel actually.

Here is how to turn off gridlines in Numbers or the correct terminology is changing the cell border colors or just border colors. It is very easy.

http://screencast.com/t/F9vuRE1xFold

Message was edited by: wbweston

wbweston wrote:
Here is how to turn off gridlines in Numbers or the correct terminology is changing the cell border colors or just border colors. It is very easy.

http://screencast.com/t/F9vuRE1xFold

What some replies, including this one, seem to be missing is the OP's desire (not actually clearly stated until his third post, copied below) to be able to turn off/hide the default 'gridlines' that Numbers applies to the imported Excel sheet +while retaining any 'borders' that have been applied in Excel+.

Tim Murray2:
I understand the process. But the thing is that I get sent large Excel sheets with a number of custom borders already in place. Sure, I could travel around the sheet and deal with specific areas where I don't want borders, but it would take forever. And select-all, followed by changing the borders, ends up changing everything.

What I was hoping to hear was there was a setting I had missed similar to Excel's Preferences > View > Show Gridlines.

From his description, Excel adds a 'border' over the default grid line as a separate item. Either may be removed/hidden without affecting the other.

In Numbers, 'borders' appear to be applied by modifying the weight and/or colour of the existing 'gridline' segment(s). As each 'border'/'gridline segment' only a single object, it's not possible to remove/hide only the 'border' or only the 'gridline'.

It is possible to do what the OP describes, but as noted previously by him and by wbweston, the process is tedious to say the least, particularly with a sheet on which there are multiple separate areas marked with borders.

Sounds like time to *Provide Numbers Feedback* (via the Numbers menu) to Apple and make the feature request.

Regards,
Barry

The OP said he gets large Excel spreadsheets with custom borders and he wants to keep all custom borders and turn off the rest. One solution is for the sender of these spreadsheets to turn off gridlines prior to sending the file. Numbers is importing WYSIWYG from Excel. If there are gridlines in Excel, they are imported as borders in Numbers. No gridlines in Excel, no borders (other than the custom ones) in Numbers and there will be gridlines only when the table is selected.

Badunit wrote:
One solution is for the sender of these spreadsheets to turn off gridlines prior to sending the file.

Sounds reasonable to me. I would hope that Terry tries that and gets back to us on how it works.

Regards,
Barry