How to change border color of active cell in Excel?

In Excel, the border color of active cell or range are different from others as below screenshot shown. But in some times, you want to change the border color of the active cell for more outstanding from others. In this article, I will give you some tricks on changing border of the active cells for making it differ from others in Excel.

Change border color of active cell with VBA
Outstanding active cell with Kutools for Excel

Change border color of active cell with VBA

To change the filled color of active cell is a good choice to make it outstanding, but there is no built-in function to help you except macro code.

1. Press Alt + F11 keys to open Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. Double click at the sheet you want to use the code in the Project Explore pane, and paste below code to the Module script.

VBA: Change background color of active cell

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
'UpdatebyExtendOffice20160726
    Cells.Borders.ColorIndex = xlNone
    Target.Borders.Color = vbRed
End Sub

3. Save the code, and now when you select a range, the range’s border color will be change to red. See screenshot:

Tip: it will remove all border format of the sheet if you apply this macro code.

Outstanding active cell with Kutools for Excel

If you have Kutools for Excel installed, you can enable its Reading Layout to across highlight the active cell for sticking out.

After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:

Click Kutools > Reading Layout, and then when you select a cell or a range, it will across highlight the cell. See screenshot:

Tip: You can change the settings of the Reading Layout by clicking Kutools > Reading Layout > Reading Layout Settings, and in the popping dialog, specify the options as you need. See screenshots:

Demo: Outstanding active cell/row/column using Kutools for Excel