cell border colors in Excel

[Rob]

Cell border colors should be changeable without having to respecify the
border lines for the cell.

To reproduce the problem, open excel and apply a thick border to any cell.
Now, click on the Format menu, then on "Cells..." then on Borders. Change the
color to red and hit Apply. The cell color is unchanged. Excel isn't smart
enough to apply the changes without you having to respecify the border lines
of the cell.

Cell border colors should change on the selected cells when applying a
border color change WITHOUT having to reapply new cell border lines! I don't
have to retype the text in a cell to change its color, so why should I have
to replace border lines to do the same? I seriously thought this was a bug,
then searched and found out how to change the color. I saw others on your
user group sites who were also confused.

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[MartinW]

Well, personally I'd call that a great feature! It allows you complete
flexibility for your cells. You can have a red double line on one side a
blue dotted line on the other a green feint line on top and a purple dashed
line on the bottom.
I can't think of a situation where I would need that much flexibility but
I'm glad it's there!!!

 

[Rob]

You make a good point. The problem isn't the flexibility, it's the behaviour
of the program. The way the program works now, it does nothing when users
apply this change. If users want four different colors on their cell borders,
fine, give them that flexibility, but don't fail to do anything at all when a
user has selected the cell, and changed a color setting, then has hit apply.
It appears that the program isn't working. At the very least, it could change
the color of all the borders!

If you had selected a cell with black text, then clicked on on the text
color and set it to red, and it failed, would you be bragging about the
flexibility of setting each letter to a different color? I don't think so.
This is a behaviour consistency issue. When an object is selected, and
attributes are changed, and the user hits Apply, the program fails if it does
nothing.

 

[MartinW]

Still can't agree Rob,

After you click your color then click on the presets "outline" or "inside".

The funcionality you are asking for is already there at the cost of one
extra click.

 

[Rob]

It's a question of default behaviour and good design, not a lack of
functionality.

For example:
Select a cell, add some text, move off the cell, then reselect it, change
the color. It works.

Select a cell, add a border, move off the cell, then reselect it, change the
color. It doesn't work.

This is inconsistent behaviour.

When you open the font dialog in Excel, do you reset everything when you
only need to change the color? No. You touch only the attribute you want to
affect. If I have selected a cell that already has a border, it should be
clear to the programmer that a user selecting RED wants all four borders red
(as the default behaviour). That doesn't mean you can't allow other users to
have a pink top border, purple on the sides, and black dots on the bottom.
We're talking DEFAULT behaviour here.

If the functionality were consistent, I would have to change the color
attribute to red for the text, then go back and select the cell I wanted red!
Thank goodness it doesn't work that way!

If I select a cell with black text and then select text color red, I expect
to see the contents of the cell change color. If it didn't, I'd assume the
program wasn't working. And the fact that others have posted about this adds
weight to the idea.

 

[MartinW]

Afraid I still can't agree,

You keep comparing fonts and borders as if they are similar, but they're
not. For colour purposes a set of text is one object and a border is four
separate objects.

You seem to think that the programmer should be able to read your mind and
know when you want those four objects to be treated as one. Well they didn't
bother trying to achieve that, they simply put it in as one of the options
available to you which you can achieve with one extra click.

 

[Rob]

I'm comparing objects and the way they behave. The behaviour is inconsistent.

When I select a cell, I mean the entire cell! Is this so hard?
When I select a cell and color the text, does the programmer have to read my
mind in order to know that I mean ALL the letters in the cell? This is
absurd.

If I select a cell that already has four borders defined, it doesn't take a
big mental leap for the programmer to know "Oh, he means THIS cell, which has
four borders." Well, duh, I'm pointing at the object, the way I point at a
cell, a column, a textbox---whatever. And yes, I know these objects aren't
all the same thing. But the approach to applying attributes for all is the
same---except for cell borders.

 

[Rob]

Thanks for the back and forth.

I believe, if anyone ever reads these posts, that they'll agree with my
post. I have a programming background and showed this to a couple of other
programmers that agree about the default behaiviour.

You seem to think that I am somehow going to deprive you of some
functionality, which isn't the case at all.

If they can assume that a red text attribute applies to all the text in the
cell, they could also assume that a red attribute applied to a cell applies
to all four borders.

It's really no more complicated than that.

 

[Dominic]

Rob,

How would the program know if you DIDN'T want all the current borders to
change to the new color?

 

[Rob]

The interface already provides for this. Go to the same dialog and click on
the various borders and set the colors each as you need. Nothing needs to be
changed for that to work. BUT, if a cell already has borders and you simply
want to change them, shouldn't you be able to point to this object, set the
color to red, then click apply?

My cell had the borders defined, I only wanted them red. I selected the
cell, right clicked, clicked Format cells... , selected Borders, then clicked
RED, and apply...only to have Excel sit there doing nothing.

Can you imagine the equivalent with text? I select a cell, click red,
nothing happens, and later I go online to find out that nothing happened
because I didn't specify which letters should be red? Seems wacky to me.

Granted, some may want their borders to be all multicolored, as some do with
text in their cells, but shouldn't the programmers assume that most people
coloring borders will want them all the same color, just as they assume that
someone coloring the text in a cell wants all the letters the same color?

The program already provides a way of hanlding the exceptions, it's the
default that I am talking about.