Show or hide gridlines in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel

Note: This article does not apply to PowerPoint for Mac, PowerPoint Online, or Word Online.

Gridlines help give you visual cues when you're formatting in Office. You can align shapes and other objects in your PowerPoint slides and Word documents, and distinguish between cell boundaries in and sections of your spreadsheets and workbooks in Excel.

In Word and PowerPoint, gridlines are for visual reference only and cannot be printed. If you want to print gridlines in Excel, see Print gridlines in a worksheet.

To show the gridlines, in Excel, PowerPoint, or Word, click the View tab, and then check the Gridlines box.

To hide the gridlines, uncheck the Gridlines box.

More about tools that help you align and place text and objects:

• Snap charts, pictures, and objects to a grid to align or format them

• Print gridlines in a worksheet

• Change grid spacing and other gridline settings

• Use master-level guides to align objects across all slides

• Show or hide the ruler in PowerPoint 2013

• Show or hide rulers in Word

• Show or hide gridlines on a worksheet