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How to change the border color of multiple cells in Excel?

Author Kelly Last modified

Customizing the border color of cells in Excel is a great way to enhance the readability and visual appeal of your spreadsheets. Whether you are preparing a report, organizing data, or presenting results, altering the border color can help to highlight important information effectively. This article will guide you through several approaches to modify border colors in Excel, including manual adjustments, batch changes with advanced tools, and creating custom borders using Excel's Cell Styles feature.

Manually change the border color of cells by drawing the line color

Manually changing the border color allows for immediate and precise control over the appearance of your spreadsheet. Please do as follows.

  1. Under the "Home" tab, click the "Border" drop-down menu, select "Line Color", and then choose a color from the palette that appears.
    Note: This sets the color for any borders you draw until you change it again.
    A screenshot of the Line Color option in the Border dropdown menu in Excel
  2. Use the mouse to draw borders around the needed cells. You can choose to draw outside borders, inside borders, or individual border lines based on your formatting needs.

Once you've drawn the borders, double click anywhere in the worksheet to exit the drawing mode.

Batch change the border color of cells with Kutools AI

For users dealing with large datasets or needing to standardize the appearance of multiple cells, Kutools AI helps to batch change border colors across many cells at once.

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After installing Kutools for Excel, select "Kutools AI" > "AI Aide" to open the "Kutools AI Aide" pane. Then configure as follows.

  1. Select the range of cells where you want to change the border color.
  2. In the "Kutools AI Aide" pane, enter the following command in the edit box and click the "Send" button (or press "Enter").
    Change the border color of selection to red.
  3. Kutools AI then analyzes the command and provides a tailored solution. Click the "Execute" button will change the borders of selected cells immediately.

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Create your custom border with certain color using Cell Styles

Creating and applying custom cell styles is an excellent way to ensure consistency across your Excel documents. This section will show you how to create a custom border style with certain color in Excel.

  1. On the "Home" tab, go to the "Styles" group, click "Cell Styles" > "New Cell Style".
    A screenshot of enabling the New Cell Style feature
  2. In the "Style" dialog box, name your new style in the "Style name" box, and then click the "Format" button.
    A screenshot of the Style dialog box
  3. In the "Format Cells" dialog box, specify your line style, line color under the "Border" tab.
    A screenshot of specifying the line style and color
  4. Save the settings.

From now on, you can apply this new style to any selected cells by choosing it from the "Cell Styles" menu.

A screenshot showing the custom style

By understanding these methods provided in the post, you can effectively enhance the visual impact of your spreadsheets, making them clearer and more engaging.

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