listi.net

Excel Tutorial - How to turn off Gridlines

This tutorial will teach you how to turn off gridlines in Excel and also teach you something about learning. If you want to know without a lesson then the shortcut keys are:

(Excel 2007, 2010) Alt+T, Alt+O, A, Alt+D, Alt+D, Alt+D, Alt+D, Space to toggle it.

(Excel 2003) Alt+T, Alt+O, V, Alt+G to toggle it.

I want you to open Microsoft Excel and turn off the gridlines. Gridlines are the light-blue lines that makes a spreadsheet look a little like a graph paper. Below and to the left is an example. The gridline setting is associated with a sheet so you have to set it for each sheet in your workbook.
Excel with gridlines

The purpose of this lesson is to teach you one of the most important lessons when learning something is to figure out things you don't know. This comes from experience in problem-solving.

There are only 4 ways to learn things:

Take a class

Ask someone (even Google)

Read a book

Figure it out

When you were little, you didn't know how to walk. But somehow you know now. It's because you saw other people doing it and decided that you wanted to do it too. You then got up and fell down. But after you fell, you didn't say "This is too hard" or "I can't do this." You tried again and again and again. You didn't stop until you were walking.

Some things can't be taught, you must figure them out. Riding a bike, learning to swim, hitting a baseball, skating. You have to try and fail. Then you have to try again and again until you succeed. Any great athlete or talented person at one time couldn't perform. I once didn't know Excel and was confused by it. Had I given up, you wouldn't be reading this now.

A key to success in learning Excel is to figure things out. I can't tell you how many times I was face to face with some vague error message, but I almost always figure out what the problem is.

The funny thing about problems that they're almost always obvious in hindsight.

Excel without gridlines

So go to Microsoft Excel and find a way to get rid of the gridlines. I'd like you to try to find how to do this for 10 minutes. If you haven't figured out how, here is your first hint.

blog comments powered by Disqus