Forum Discussion
Excel - The very basics! Grey grid lines disappearing..
I am supporting a small group of Office365 business users. One user has this problem, grid lines disappearing, with Excel on every sheet she opens. How do I fix the formatting problem for Excel, not an individual sheet?
I had such issue previously, each new workbook is opened without gridlines. XLSTART folder is empty. Didn't dig what was the reason, clean re-install helped, just repair doesn't work.
Assuming you mean that when they open a new Excel spreadsheet, the grid lines are already missing, then it sounds as though the base Excel file has been changed for that particular user.
Every time someone starts Excel, it opens using a hidden Excel template file. Anyhow, it sounds as though the hidden file in this case has been set to not show gridlines.
In previous versions of Excel you just had to go to the XLSTART folder and edit/change the file there.
If you work for a larger business, chances are you'll have roaming profiles so, you may find several of these folders in different places (e.g. "C" drive, Network drive etc.)
The easiest thing to do {probably?} would be to open up a spreadsheet on say, you machine, so that it shows the normal empty sheets with gridlines. Then save it as a template file somewhere that both your and the bad machine can access. This is how you do it...
Under the Save As type dropdown, select Excel Template. It usually saves it to the Template folder but you can change this or move the file elsewhere.
Then, go onto the bad machine, open Excel and select ALT + F11. Go to the immediate window and paste the following code...
? application.StartupPath
and hit return. It should give you the folder location where, you need to save your copy of the good Excel template file you created earlier.
Location will be something like... C:\Users\{user.name}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART
Close Excel on the bad machine - without saving the file - and then reopen a new blank Excel file on the bad machine. It should open showing the gridlines and everything should be back to normal - fingers crossed.
You would do the same thing, for example, if you wanted say red gridlines, blue background and all your spreadsheets to open with a company logo in the top (left?) corner. 😉
Kind regards
Nauthstar
Go to File > Options > Advanced >
Scroll down to 'Display Options for this Worksheet'
Check that 'Show Gridlines' is ticked and that you have a visible colour selected below that.
Thanks. Will that change be applied to all new sheets when she starts Excel?
If it doesn't, open a new worksheet, make the changes as mentioned and then 'save as', change workbook name to Book and save in the XLSTART folder (path should look something like below):
C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART
When you open Excel thereafter, this should open as your default blank workbook.
