Default border color

Question

When I format one or more cells to impose borders, I usually get a black color, which shows up as Automatic in the color picker.  Now, it defaults to gray, and I have to manually choose black every time I apply borders.  I've web-searched and found only answers pertaining to the grid, which is not the same as the borders that I am applying to selected cells.  What is the way to set the default border color?

Answer 1

I see.  Thanks for clarifying.

Before changing the default printer, however, I tried to see if I could reproduce the result with a new workbook.  I could not (and it wasn't even necessary to use "Excel /O" to avoid the problem).  I then tried to see whether the problem was specific to the sheet.  It seems to afflict certain sheets in the workbook in question, but not other sheets.  For the unaffected sheets, it was not necessary to choose a different default printer to avoid the  problem.  For the affected sheets, the nonstandard border colour seems to be the default regardless of which cell I choose, even if the cell is well outside of the range of the working area of the sheet.  So it seems to be sheet-specific, but not range-specific as far as I can tell.

I'm assuming that this provides way more information than the original test of changing the default printer and issuing the command "Excel /O".  Is this correct?  Does it give any further clue as to the cause of the problem?

Answer 2

Hi Paul,

Thank you for replying.

Generally Office applications have a tendency to have formatting issues if the printer driver is not installed or updated properly.

To check if the issue is caused due to the printer driver, you may change the default printer on the system.

If the issue occurs with all Excel files, then you may open Excel using the following switch command and verify the results.

To do that, close Excel. Go to Start, click on All Programs and Accessories and then Run. In the open box type in ‘Excel /O’ and hit ok. (Note: There is a space between Excel and /).

Thank you

Answer 3

Since I'm not sure what I did to cause this, I can't really test it on other files.  It's certainly not normal in my experience with Excel.

I'm a bit confused about your advice to investigate the printer.  I'm printing, just formatting selected cells to have borders.  Could you please explain?

Answer 4

Hi Paul,

Does the issue occur with a particular Excel file or all files?

Let us change the default printer to OneNote 2010 or Microsoft XPS Document Writer and then check how Excel works.

For more information on how to change the default printer on Windows 7, refer to the following link:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Change-your-default-printer

I hope the above information helps. If you still have questions, you can always reply and I’ll be happy to assist you.

Thank you