Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Adding Page Borders to a Printout.

Adding Page Borders to a Printout

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 13, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


Alan uses Excel frequently for creating printouts that are used by others. He likes to include borders on the final documents to give them a professional appearance. Alan knows how to invoke page borders in Word, but there isn't a similar feature in Excel. Lacking this he has resorted to manually inserting borders on cell ranges to get the appearance he wants. This works OK if the printout is a single page, but it isn't too great when Alan has multi-page printouts. He wonders if there is some way to add page borders automatically in Excel.

There are a couple of ways you can approach creating page borders for an Excel printout, but none of them are automatic. One way is to rely on your printer. Some printers have the ability to add borders automatically around the border of a page. This, of course, is outside the control of Excel. You can find out if your printer has such capabilities by displaying the Printer Options dialog box for your printer (accessible through the Print dialog box or from the printing options page displayed by pressing Ctrl+P) and poking around through the options visible there.

Another approach is to create an image of your border using your favorite graphics program and save it as a JPG, PNG, or TIF file. (You could actually use several other image file formats, but these are ones typically supported by all the graphics programs.) In Excel you can then, within the header, insert the picture of the border. Format the picture to adjust the image size so it covers your whole page.

There are also third-party solutions available. Two that have come highly recommended by some subscribers over the years are Asap Utilities (https://www.asap-utilities.com) and Fine Print (https://fineprint.com/fp/). Both allow you to create borders rather easily.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (8185) 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: Adding Page Borders to a Printout.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Overcoming Automatic Word Selection

When you select text with the mouse, Word usually selects entire words for you. If you don't want to do this, you can use ...

Discover More

Automatically Formatting Graphics and AutoShapes

Want to change the graphics formatting defaults in Word? You can customize some of these defaults, saving yourself some time.

Discover More

Making AutoComplete Work for an Entire Column

AutoComplete is a great feature for quickly adding data to a worksheet. If you are confused by why some things are picked ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Fitting Your Printout on a Page

Tired of wasting paper when you print a worksheet? You can scale Excel's output so that it fits only the number of pages ...

Discover More

Repeating Rows at the Bottom of a Page

Excel allows you to repeat rows at the top of every page of a printout. If you want to repeat rows at the bottom of every ...

Discover More

Omitting Page Numbers on Some Pages

Excel doesn't allow for as robust of headers and footers as Word does. Even so, there are some things you can do to ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 7 + 9?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.