Well hidden feature here, which you may not came across unless you chanced upon it. If you have inserted a table in PowerPoint 2007, then gave it a border, you will realize that there’s no direct way to change the border color of your preference as compared to previous versions of PowerPoint. It can be done though. Here’s what you should do:
- Double click on the table to bring up the Table Tools > Design tab.
- Under ‘Table Styles’, set the table to ‘No Borders’.
- Now, under ‘Draw Borders’, set it to a different ‘Pen Color’.
- Set the table to ‘All Borders’ again.
To give each cell different colors, you can also select ‘Pen Color’ of your preference. Next, hover over the table border, click and hold. Ensure that the border is highlighted, then drag it to apply the color to the rest of the cells. If it doesn’t work, increase the zoom level and try again.
Thanks for that pointer. Worked a treat.
very helpful. Thank you.
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Wow thank you!
Thanks for the tips! Certainly helped when I needed it most!
Excellent tip, was looking for this for a while
You rock.
problem iwt hthis is that it changes the text colour as well. which is not what i want
What do you do if you’ve got an earlier version of windows?
Thanks for this tip. I had spent WAY too much time trying to figure out how to do this … until I read this. Thanks again.
Hey Thanks! It’s a great help! I am going mad with this 2007 🙁
Thanks for this
very helpful.thank you:)
Thanks. Very helpful, solved my problem
thanks ! MS apparently are hiding functions and not elaborating them in the help sections. BAH °!
BR; F
Unbelievable that this is so difficult. Thanks.
Now why didn’t I think of that? It seems obvious now, but I really struggled to work out how to control table formatting compared to PP2003. Thank you!!
Thank you, that was doing my head in
Thank you. Board Committee is in a couple of mins and i really needed this. great contribution.
Thanks a lot. Came in very handy..!! 🙂
Thank You! I was going insane!
Wow! Thanks a ton, bailed me out this evening
Thanx alot, almost gave up on making this presentation!
Redmond please default. So you get rid of allthe assholes that devised the Ribbon
THANK YOU!!!!!
Thank you – after much frustration, you saved the day!!
Many thanks, dude!
Thank you. Like others I was at my wits’ end! Why on earth did MS make it so flipping difficult to intuitively figure out?
OMG, thanks a lot. You made my day and saved me from this Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 hell. 🙂 🙂 🙂
And I would add, why did they bother to change it as formatting tables worked perfectly fine in 2003? I know, I know, they were “making it intuitive.” Not!
Thanks so much. A brilliant solution to something that’s been problematic for ages!
Can’t help echoing all the plaudits for the help! Wish someone from MS reads this and understands how painful some of these “cool” changes they made. Would be interesting to hear their side of the store 🙂
Thanks a ton! Very hepfu!
This info had put an end to so much effort I been putting untill now for border color change. Thanks a lot..
And boom goes the dynamite! Thank you very much!
Really helped…
Simple, useful steps…
This is a great help. It was making me crazy. Thanks for the post.
THANK YOU! I went to Microsoft’s help page on borders, and they had no mention of this. Amazing how each version of Office makes formerly simple tasks more convoluted and less user-friendly. I don’t think they have a full understanding of the word “improvements.”
Thanks for the tip – but duh! Of course it’s easy to give a table all new borders (although of course not as easy as it could have been, thanks to Microsoft).
But what about situations where you have a carefully drawn Table with only very specific borders around vers specific cells? Is there a way to let the borders that DO exist stay in place, and let the borders that DON’T exist keep on not existing? When you have a very large Table with artfully placed lines and sections, it can take AGES to redraw them…
Any ideas? Anyone?
Thanks tohlz and everybody…
Very helpful, thank you.
Omg, thank you for the explanation. The (more) intuitive way would’ve been to right-click –> change shape –> Line Color, but no, this menu is of course deactivated.
@Ben: Do it in excel and copy&paste it. If worst comes to worst, take a screenshot and then paste the image.
Thanks, very helpful.