How to Remove Dotted Lines in Excel 

Have you ever noticed strange dotted lines across your Excel sheet? These lines are quite confusing and make the sheet look messy. The good point is that they are easy to remove when you know the cause behind it. In this blog, we will learn about why dotted lines appear in Excel, and how to remove dotted lines in Excel. Let’s delve more into this. 

Possible Reasons for Dotted Lines in Excel

Dotted lines mainly occur in Excel due to three reasons:

1. Page Breaks: page break lines help to show where the page ends when you print your sheet. These are mainly divided into two parts which are vertical and horizontal lines. Vertical Lines refer to column breaks and horizontal lines refer to row breaks. You often see them after using Print Preview or changing Page Layout settings.

2. Cell Borders: Someone may have added dotted or dashed borders to certain cells. These are custom styles used to highlight data.

3. Gridlines: These are the light Gray lines you see in every Excel sheet. They help you see cell boundaries. Sometimes they may look dotted depending on your screen or printer settings.

How to Remove Dotted Lines in Excel

To remove these lines you need to know which type of lines are these. Here is how to remove each of these types:

1. Removing the Page Break Dotted Lines

These lines often appear after printing or previewing a file. Here’s how to get rid of them:

Method 1: Turn Off Page Breaks

• Click the File tab (top-left).
• Choose Options.
• In the Excel Options window, click Advanced.
• Scroll down to Display options for this worksheet.
• Uncheck Show page breaks.
• Click OK.

This will hide the dotted lines that show page breaks.

Method 2: Reset Page Breaks

If you have added page breaks manually then you need to follow these steps to remove them: 

• Go to the Page Layout tab.
• Click Breaks (in the Page Setup group).
• Select Reset All Page Breaks.

That will remove any breaks you or Excel added.

2. Remove Dotted Lines Borders

If the dotted lines are just borders (used to decorate or separate data), here’s what to do:

• Select the cells with the dotted lines.
• Click the Home tab.
• In the Font group, click the Borders icon (a square with four borders).
• Choose No Border from the dropdown menu.

This removes all borders, including dotted, dashed, or solid lines.

3. Removing Gridlines

Gridlines are the default lines you see in Excel. They aren’t printed unless you choose to print them. You can hide them like this:

Method 1: Use the View Tab

• Click the View tab.
• In the Show group, uncheck Gridlines.

Method 2: Use Excel Options

• Go to File then click Options.
• After that, click on the Advanced tab.
• Scroll to Display options for this worksheet.
• Uncheck Show gridlines.
• Click OK.

These steps will help to hide the gridlines from your Excel sheet.

Tips For Removing Page Break Lines in Excel

If you are still seeing dotted lines, here are a few more things that you can try: 

1. Double-Check your work

Settings of Excel like gridlines or page breaks apply only to the sheet which you are working on. If you’re switching between sheets then you may notice that one sheet has dotted lines while another doesn’t. Make sure to check that you’re working on the correct Excel sheet.

2. Determine the source of the Dotted Line

If you’re not sure about what kind of line it is, here is a quick helpbook for that:

• If horizontal or vertical lines are going across the worksheet, these are usually page breaks.
• If the lines are around individual cells then these are cell borders.
• If there are faint lines over the complete sheet then these are gridlines.

Clicking on a cell or zooming in may help you tell the difference.

3. Restart Excel

If the lines don’t disappear after you make changes. You need to restart Excel. For this you need to follow these steps: 

• Save your File → Close Excel → Reopen your file.

Sometimes Excel needs a restart to fully refresh the view.

4. Consult an Expert

If you’ve tried everything and the lines are still there, your file might have more advanced settings, add-ins, or macros causing the issue. In the following cases you can visit online forums like Microsoft Support, Reddit’s r/excel or MrExcel. Rather than this you can also watch a quick youtube tutorial.