Showing 'invisible' table borders

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In Print Layout mode, I do a lot of quasi-page layout using tables. In the
previous versions of Word, the table lines - though set to have no border -
showed up as a grey line. This allowed me to see the boundaries of the cells
while designing, even though I had no intention of ever seeing them on the
finished printed page. As the new version of Word seems to default to 'no
border means no line', I was wondering if there was a way to toggle or set to
display the cell lines while set to 'no border'. It's very disconcerting
while designing to see floating white space, not knowing where cells end,
begin, etc. And I am hoping to avoid having to give them a temporary colored
border while designing, only to have to shut it off later.

Is there a way to 'Show' the table lines, just like tabs and carriage returns?

 

[Jay Freedman]

In Print Layout mode, I do a lot of quasi-page layout using tables.
In the previous versions of Word, the table lines - though set to
have no border - showed up as a grey line. This allowed me to see
the boundaries of the cells while designing, even though I had no
intention of ever seeing them on the finished printed page. As the
new version of Word seems to default to 'no border means no line', I
was wondering if there was a way to toggle or set to display the cell
lines while set to 'no border'. It's very disconcerting while
designing to see floating white space, not knowing where cells end,
begin, etc. And I am hoping to avoid having to give them a temporary
colored border while designing, only to have to shut it off later.

Is there a way to 'Show' the table lines, just like tabs and carriage
returns?

When the cursor is in a table, the Table Tools ribbon is available. The View
Gridlines button is at the left end of the Layout tab on that ribbon.

You can also go to Office button > Word Options > Advanced > Show Document
Content and check the box for "Text boundaries", which will display table
cells as well as many other boundaries.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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[Lorie]

Text boundaries options and view gridlines buttons works fine for one table
at a time and for new tables. But I have hundreds of thousands of tables that
were converted from Word 2003 to Word 2007 that printed "no border" but
displayed gridlines in 2003 and changed to a BLACK border (displays and
prints) in 2007--through no changes of my own. There is no UNDO feature when
converting a file. Your only option is to select EVERY table and change the
color from black to none. Then click "view gridlines" to see them on the
screen.