Bottom border on a Single cell in Table within Word

Anonymous

Hello

I have MS Word 2013 and from the Internet (from within Word) I searched for the keyword [ Form ] and downloaded a form that I am now trying to customize for my own needs.

The whole form is basically a table within the Word document. I want to be able to add a bottom border around a single cell from the table, but It isn't working ! When I add the border, it adds it to the whole row, not just the cell I specified.

The way I am trying to do it, is I right-click in the cell > Table Properties > Borders and Shading > In the Preview in the left, I click the bottom border for the cell, and in the Apply to drop-down I select Cell, then click OK, then OK again.

But it applies it to whole row (which is comprised of two cells), not just the single cell. Here is a screenshot. As you can see, the border is being place underneath the Telephone cell too !

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

I have tried to make some systematic testing. The problem with a bottom border being applied to one or more extra cells to the left of the selected cell seems to be related to column widths that are not uniform and/or to horizontally merged or split cells.

Below I have included the conclusions from my tests plus a suggested solution to fix the problem when it occurs. The Office team has received the entire test report.

The test results in Word 2013 and Word 2016 were identical and I was able to provoke the bottom border error in quite a lot of situations. I could also provoke the problem in Word 2007 and Word 2010 but in fewer situations than in later versions.

In Word 2013 and Word 2016, the problem seems to occur most often under the following conditions in case no cell borders have been applied beforehand

RULE 1: The selected cell is not in the first or last table row and the selected cell is not the first cell in a row (since the problem always results in extra bottom borders in cells to the left of the selected cell) AND
RULE 2: The left and/or right edge of the selected cell is not aligned to the left and/or right edge of a cell above.

RULE 1 seems to apply always.

RULE 2 does not apply always.

The problem does not seem to be influenced by settings like cell margins or Automatically resize to fit contents.

The problem seems only to apply to bottom borders – not top borders.

When checking a cell that has been applied an undesired bottom border, the Borders and Shading dialog box shows no bottom border!

Workaround – suggested solution to fix the problem

You cannot remove the bottoms border directly from the extra cells since such cells do not react as if they have any bottom border.

After testing a number of ways to fix the problem, including the ones mentioned by other users in this thread, I have found that the following workaround works each time and is the easiest to use:

If you apply a bottom border to a selected cell and notice that extra cell(s) to the left get a border too:

Undo at once to remove the applied border.
Select the cell that must have a bottom border + the cell to the left of it.
Apply a bottom border to the two cells.
Select the leftmost of the cells only and remove the bottom border.

*The following has been added 23-Sep-2016:*It appears that Step 4 may not remove the bottom borderfrom the leftmost cell if it is the first cell in a row. Then try to select the cell below the leftmost cell and remove the top border from that cell instead (since the problem seems to never occur in the last row, there should be a cell below the problem cell). This solved the problem in my tests. Even if the right edge of the cell below is not aligned with the right edge of the cell above, the result was correct in my tests and the original problem cell got a correct bottom border.

If this is done using e.g. the Home tab > Paragraph Group > Bottom Border icon or the icon on the Mini Toolbar, it can be done rather quickly.

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57 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-09-23T17:10:30+00:00
Suzanne's solution works; however, there are some extra steps and one remaining glitch. I've revised the steps to reflect this:

If you apply a bottom border to a selected cell and notice that extra cell(s) to the left get a border too:
1. Undo at once to remove the applied border.
2. Select the cell that must have a bottom border (RIGHT) + the cell to the left of it (LEFT).
3. Apply a bottom border to the two cells.
4. Select the row below (ROW B) and align the cell borders with those of the row above (ROW A).
5. Select ROW B and restore the cell widths to where you want them to be.
6. Select the Row B LEFT cell and remove the top border. If the left border of the ROW B RIGHT cell is to the right of the left border of the ROW A RIGHT cell, you are done.
7. BUT, if the left border of ROW B RIGHT is to the left of the left border of ROW A RIGHT, you also need to select the ROW B RIGHT cell and remove the top border.
![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=1d85e49b-f624-4d7a-9657-fd9b9934a9d2)

Where it really gets complicated is when there are fewer cells in ROW B than in ROW A:

![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=3f9421b7-8036-48d9-96b9-644ec9ee8377)

What I had to do here was split ROW B RIGHT into three cells, align the borders, remove the top border in the ROW B cell below the word "Fax," move the cell borders of the extra cells to the left of the left border of the Fax cell, delete the top borders of those cells, then re-merge the cells.

It also seems you have to work from the top down. If you try to go back and change a row, you'll have to re-do all the rows below it in turn.

Thank you, Lene and Suzanne, for this workable, albeit complex, workaround. I hope Microsoft gets around to fixing this awful bug!
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Anonymous

2016-09-23T16:15:10+00:00

I was going to suggest precisely the same solution as Suzanne. That solution works here.

It is indeed a stubborn bug! In the tests I made before posting the alternative solution I got the correct result each time. Obviously, I did not take the time to make enough tests. I did test with cells that had different widths and got correct results. If I create a table that looks like yours, I also get a wrong length of the bottom border in the problem cell when I remove the top border of the cell below it. This shows that the interrelationship between the cell widths makes a difference.
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Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2016-09-23T16:04:25+00:00

Try changing the size of the Website cell temporarily; get the borders working and then resize it back.
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Anonymous

2016-09-23T14:03:38+00:00

We're getting closer! I do appreciate your efforts. While this does work, if the cells in the two rows aren't the same width, it still won't have the desired result. I'm using a table as a form that can be filled in, and the cells are all different widths to accommodate that.

Note that the first two rows, in which the cells are aligned, worked fine. But the third row is not aligned with the ones above it. This is where adding a bottom border on the right cell added a border to both cells. But the cells in the row below are not aligned with the ones above, so while removing the top border from the cell below (Website) does work, it doesn't solve the problem in this case.
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