Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 7, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365
Let's say you have a list of company transactions. Each transaction includes a department number, a title, and other information (amount, date, authorizer, etc.). As you get more and more of these items in your list, you may want a way to automatically add "dividing lines" based on the department number. For instance, when the department number changes, you may want to include a line between the two departments.
To add this type of formatting to your list, start by sorting your data table by department. For the sake of this example, I'll assume that your data is actually in columns A:F, with the department numbers in column A. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1. The data to be divided.
To add the automatic dividing lines, follow these steps:
Figure 2. The New Formatting Rule dialog box.
That's it; you should now see a line that appears across the entire width of your data every time the department changes.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6863) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Automatic Lines for Dividing Lists.
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2024-09-07 08:31:43
Alex Blakenburg
Sadly although in standard formatting you have the option of Thin Medium & Thick borders, the conditional formatting only allows the Thin option.
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